HARRISBURG -- Intelligent design is creationism in disguise and has "utterly no place" in science classrooms, a federal judge ruled today.

The decision by U.S. District Judge John E. Jones stops the Dover Area School Board from requiring ninth-graders to hear a statement about intelligent design before they learn about evolution.

Eleven parents who sued the district celebrated the ruling before some 25 microphones and 15 television cameras at a press conference in Harrisburg today.

		Excerpt from ruling "Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources." -- Judge John E. Jones III

"We had no idea how this would end up but I'm glad we're here today in victory," said lead plaintiff Tammy Kitzmiller. "Eleven ordinary citizens stepped forward and made a difference."

The decision is a setback in the intelligent design movement, which recently gained ground in Kansas, where the state school board voted to add intelligent design to its science program. Proponents of intelligent design say organisms are so complex that they could not have evolved and therefore must have been created intact.

"Intelligent design had its day in court and it lost," said Vic Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Association of Pennsylvania, which represented plantiffs along with the Philadelphia firm Pepper Hamilton.

The opinion could have a ripple effect throughout the country because judges in other jurisdictions are likely to refer to Mr. Jones's rationale as they decide their own cases.

"ID's religious nature is evidence because it involves a supernatural designer," Mr. Jones wrote.

Board members required teachers -- or administrators, if teachers refused -- to read students a disclaimer before lessons about evolution. The disclaimer, which students could opt out of hearing, cautioned that evolution is not based in fact, that intelligent design is an alternative theory, and that teachers could not discuss it but more information was available in a book in the school library.

"The classroom presentation of the disclaimer, including school administrators making a special appearance in the science classrooms to deliver the statement, the complete prohibition on discussion or questioning ID, and the opt-out feature all convey a strong message of religious endorsement," Mr. Jones wrote.

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for the ID policy," he added. "It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID policy."

	Full text of decision Click here to download the full text of the court decision in .pdf format.

The controversy prompted massive community debate and interest from more than 500 media organizations as far away as Thailand and New Zealand. It also prompted the ouster of eight incumbent school board members in November's election. Elected instead were eight opponents of intelligent design.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., said he would like to appeal the decision, but it was up to the school board, which he aided with its case.

"What this really looks like is an ad hominem attack on scientists who happen to believe in God," Thompson said of Jones' ruling.

Eric Rothschild, the lead attorney for the families that sued to stop the ID mention, praised the ruling.

---

More details in tomorrow's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.