Advocates rally for sex education

This from the Courier-Journal:

Advocates for sex education in the public schools rallied in the Capitol Thursday in support of legislation that would require schools teaching the subject to use a science-based curriculum.

Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, a Louisville Democrat who is sponsoring House Bill 119, said the measure is needed to protect teens not only from teenage pregnancies but also from sexually transmitted diseases.

“We're in the 21st century,” Marzian said in expressing outrage that sex education standards are not in place in the schools. “You would think teaching sex education was teaching voodoo or whatever.”

She said she decided to sponsor the legislation after her daughter, a public school teacher, told her of questions her students asked during health class that were based on wrong assumptions.“It terrified me,” she said.

Sex education isn't currently required in public schools. Rep. Tom Burch, D-Louisville, said a 1980s law requiring it was repealed by the 1990 Kentucky Education Reform Act.

Marzian's bill requires that a school teaching sex education must use age-appropriate, culturally sensitive and medically accurate information and not limit instruction to discussion of abstinence or contraception...

The Price of Public Proselytizing

Over At EdJurist, Justin wonders why people are willing to pay for "relatively silly cases."

The law was pretty clear that the Ten Commandments was not going to fly in a new display in a public courthouse, even before they ever posted them. They would have been wise to listen to their counsel and forget about it - instead, local taxpayers are going to have to foot the (sizeable) bill.

In McCreary County v. ACLU some counties in Kentucky wanted to put the Ten Commandments in the courthouse. The ACLU sued to have them removed and prevaled. Now the taxpayers of McCreary County have a $400,000 bill to pay - not only their own attorneys' fees, but the ACLU's as well.

H-L: Correction on 10 Commandments Case

KSN&C Backstory here.

This from the Herald-Leader with an AP tag:

Correction: Ten Commandments-Kentucky story

The Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- In a Nov. 28 story about a Ten Commandments case in Grayson County, The Associated Press reported erroneously that two attorneys would split more than $44,000 in attorneys fees awarded by a judge.

U.S. District Judge Joseph H. McKinley awarded the attorney fees to the plaintiffs - Raymond Harper, Ed Meredith and the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky - who won an injunction against displaying the commandments in the county courthouse. They were represented by ACLU attorneys David Friedman and
William E. Sharp, but the judge's order did not specify the disposition of the fees.

Appeals court tosses out Kentucky teen's lawsuit

This from the Herald-Leader:

ASHLAND, Ky. --A Kentucky student won't be allowed to proceed with a lawsuit against his school district for instituting a policy that barred him from expressing his opposition to homosexuality, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 vote, said Boyd County High School student Timothy Morrison failed to show that he was harmed by the policy that was later changed.

Judge Deborah L. Cook, joined by Judge John R. Adams, also said Morrison didn't show how winning a lawsuit seeking only $1 in damages would rectify his situation. Judge Karen Nelson Moore dissented.

"This case should be over," Cook wrote. "Allowing it to proceed to determine the constitutionality of an abandoned policy - in the hope of awarding the plaintiff a single dollar - vindicates no interest and trivializes the important business of the federal courts."

...The ruling is a reversal of a previous ruling that held Morrison should be allowed to pursue the lawsuit. The ACLU had supported the Alliance Defense Fund in arguing that Morrison should be permitted to pursue his case...

Miami Argues Over Removal of Schoolbook on Cuba

A three-judge panel heard arguments earlier this month over the Miami-Dade County school board’s decision to remove a children’s book about Cuba from elementary school libraries. Board members said the book painted too rosy a picture of life in Cuba.

“The books are rife with factual omissions, misrepresentations and inaccuracies that render them educationally unsuitable,” Richard Ovelmen, a lawyer for the board, told the judges in the Federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. “The basic fact that there is a dictatorship, that there is a regime of 48 years is not mentioned.”

But a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, JoNel Newman, argued, “The school board can’t pull a book because of a political viewpoint.”

The board initially took the 32-page book, “Vamos a Cuba,” and its English version, “A Visit to Cuba,” off school library shelves in June 2006 after a parent objected to its contents.

The book, written by Alta Schreier and published in 2001, is part of a 24-book series for children in kindergarten through second grade that discusses travel around the world and different cultures. Its cover shows smiling schoolchildren dressed in the uniform of the Pioneers, the Communist youth group to which every Cuban student must belong.

This from the New York Times.

Bible classes subject of school lawsuit

DALLAS --Two advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit recently against a West Texas school district on behalf of eight parents who say a Bible course violates their religious liberty.

The American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way Foundation sued the Ector County Independent School District, asking the Odessa school system to stop teaching the course.

"Religion is very important in my family and we are very involved in our religious community. But the public schools are no place for religious indoctrination that promotes certain beliefs that not all the kids in the school share," Doug Hildebrand, a Presbyterian deacon who is among the plaintiffs, said in a written statement released by the ACLU.

The Ector school board approved the high school elective in 2005. It teaches the King James version of the sacred text using material produced by the Greensboro, N.C.-based National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, and uses the Bible as the students' textbook.

This from the Boston Globe.

Louisiana school district sued over Bibles in school

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday filed its fifth religion-related lawsuit in 13 years against an eastern Louisiana school district, this time alleging that a principal improperly allowed people to distribute Bibles to students.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court on behalf of the parents of a fifth-grader at Loranger Middle School in Tangipahoa Parish, who were upset that Gideons Bibles were being given to students on school property during class hours.

This from CNN.