Re: Steven Williams Case - more factual information

[Ed Brayton]

Even more interesting in that story, I think, are two things. First, a spokesman for the school district points out that the 5th grade textbook that Mr. Williams uses contains a full copy of the Declaration of Independence. That alone shows that the ADF's press release titled "Declaration of Independence Banned from Classroom" was the sort of dishonest public relations nonsense that is common in this area. In light of that, one would hope that Jim Henderson would not continue to argue that the ADF's press release was honest. Obviously the Declaration was never "banned from the classroom". Second, there is the quote from Mr. Williams himself where he says, "My agenda is to give my students an accurate representation of history." One might be more likely to take that claim seriously if his handouts did not contain numerous false quotations never said by the men they are attributed to, and one entire document that is fraudulently attributed to one of them. If his goal is accuracy, he's not doing a very good job of achieving that goal. Ed Brayton Marty Lederman wrote: Chip Lupu is unable to post from home and asked that I forward this to the list:     NPR ran a story yesterday on the Williams case.  The link is here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4224577.  According to the story, the principal had received many complaints about Williams over the past year or more, and the complaints had come from many different parents. Parents interviewed in the story said that Williams brought up God, Jesus, and Christian principles in math, science, and other subjects in addition to U.S. history, and that he sometimes did so many times per day. If that is an accurate description of Mr. Williams' behavior in a fifth grade public school class, is it not obvious that the principal is acting constitutionally and responsibly (I would describe it as "well within the zone of Establishment Clause discretion") in monitoring Mr. Williams' assignments?  Eugene Volokh was exactly right last week when he asserted that the relevant question here is NOT whether a particular assignment is a violation of the Establishment Clause -- as you can see, we can argue endlessly about the particulars of hypotheticals -- but rather whether, in light of all of the circumstances, the principal acted within the constitution in looking over Mr. Williams' shoulder.  The idea that Williams has any sort of First Amendment right to insist upon teaching in the ways described in the NPR program seems wholly preposterous.

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