Texas Citizens for Science Applauds Trial Lawyers for Public Justice

The TLPJ lawsuit against the Texas State Board of Education will have a beneficial effect on future textbook adoptions by making it clear that irrational and illegal adoption decisions by public officials have serious consequences.

Last week Trial Lawyers for Public Justice filed a lawsuit against a number of Texas State Board of Education members for their illegal treatment of an environmental science textbook. In his testimony of August 18 (available on the TCS website), Steven Schafersman wrote the following: "Their book was illegally rejected by the SBOE because the publishers refused to make an inaccurate and unscientific change of a passage which said that 'too many people reproducing too quickly' could be harmful to the environment." Other passages about the causes of industrial pollution were also criticized by SBOE members that led to the book's rejection. The book contained no factual errors, the only legal reason that the SBOE members could use to reject the book. Instead, as the lawsuit alleges, individual Board members rejected the book for their own personal, ideological biases. Such behavior violates Texas law, and Texas Citizens for Science applauds Trial Lawyers for Public Justice for their courage and perspicacity in bringing this lawsuit.

Past Texas State Boards of Education have indulged in this activity before (but it was not illegal then as it is now). In the past, this activity often concerned biology textbooks, and the current Board seems hell-bent on repeating the excesses of the past by trying to force biology textbook publishers to insert "weaknesses, criticisms, and problems" of evolution in the current books ready for adoption. If the Board rejects (or adopts as nonconforming) these books if the publishers refuse to make the desired changes, then the Board will again be engaging in illegal activity and will certainly face another lawsuit. Since the publishers have now refused to make the unscientific changes demanded by anti-evolutionists on the Board and by several creationist organizations, the Board must now adopt the biology books as submitted or face the legal consequences. Texas Citizens for Science President Steven Schafersman states, "I will personally find a way to add the biology books to the TLPJ lawsuit if they are rejected or censored, or try to initiate an independent lawsuit. Texas students cannot afford to receive a science education that misrepresents or distorts important scientific topics such as evolution and the origin of life, and Texas cannot permit misguided public officials to engage in the subversion of science."

Every Texas scientist who testified before the Board asked that they not be censored or changed in a scientifically-unwarranted fashion. All the books were judged to conform completely to the Texas science curriculum, which requires the scientific presentation of evolution, not creationism, intelligent design, or bogus "weaknesses" or "problems." Scientists and science educators made the following points:

• The textbooks have been evaulated by professional science educators and research scientists and have found to be acceptable. These are the people best qualified to judge the books, not professional politicians.
   
• The Texas economy depends on well educated citizens to work in industries such as biotechnology and energy. Dumbing down science textbooks is not good for the Texas economy.
   
• Texas has a reputation for attracting some of the best and brightest research scientists in the world. The damage to Texas's reputation, should the textbooks be rejected, will hinder its ability to attract such top scientists.
   
• Students taught from textbooks containing erroneous scientific data, as demanded by creationists on the Board and by the out-of-state Discovery Institute, will be ill-prepared to compete with students from other states, both in college and in the job market.