American Library Assoc. advice on "Pandas" book is unauthorized practice of law

Below is a copy of an email that I sent to a list of around 40 addresses -- shown at the bottom -- consisting of the plaintiffs' attorneys of Kitzmiller v. Dover (Pepper-Hamilton, the ACLU, and Americans United for Separation of Church and State), the Dover Area School Board, and the staffs of the American Library Association, the Discovery Institute, and the Dover Area School District administration. This email address list is much longer than the one I gave in Email campaign to have "Of Pandas and People" officially designated as a "banned book"; this new list includes addresses from the old list. I urge supporters to use this longer list to take full advantage of the Internet for widely disseminating their views on this matter.

Reply to email from Deborah Caldwell-Stone, Deputy Director,
Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association.

In a message dated 10/3/2006 2:47:14 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, dstone@ala.org writes:

>>>>>> The Office for Intellectual Freedom, which implements ALA's policies concerning intellectual freedom, does not believe the court's judgment in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District lawsuit constitutes a ban of the book, Of Pandas and People.

We rely upon the court's published opinion for our conclusion. The opinion plainly states the court's order:

To preserve the separation of church and state mandated by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and Art. I, § 3 of the Pennsylvania Constitution, we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District, from requiring teachers to denigrate or disparage the scientific theory of evolution, and from requiring teachers to refer to a religious, alternative theory known as ID.

In reading the court's order, we cannot identify an order or directive to remove the book Of Pandas and People from the Dover school library, or any specific order which prohibits Dover teachers from using "Of Pandas and People" in the classroom, should they choose to do so for educational purposes that do not violate the Constitution's Establishment Clause. The court's decision to bar the school board from requiring science teachers to refer to Intelligent Design, a religious theory of creation, in classrooms dedicated to the teaching of science, is not an order to remove or ban the book "Of Pandas and People" from Dover's school libraries or classrooms.

<<<<<<

To all:

In the above statement, the American Library Association is officially telling the Dover science teachers that in certain circumstances they are free to use the "Pandas" book for educational purposes in the classroom. The writer of the above statement indicates that she is speaking for the ALA and not just for herself. IMO giving this legal advice to the Dover teachers is an unauthorized practice of law by a government-chartered organization.

One of the demands in the official complaint of the Kitzmiller plaintiffs was for "an injunction .... requiring the removal of Of Pandas and People from the School District’s science classrooms." The Kitzmiller opinion's failure to specifically address this demand does not mean that the book was not in fact banned from science classrooms. In fact, the only reasonable interpretation of the Kitzmiller opinion is that the book was in fact completely banned as educational material in science classrooms, because the opinion ruled that the book is an unscientific book of a religious nature.

Finally, whether or not the book can legally be used by Dover science teachers on their own is irrelevant to the question of whether the book is a "banned book" according to the ALA's definition. The ALA's definition of "banned book" includes books that are banned from school curricula, and the Kitzmiller decision banned even the mere mention of the book from the curriculum of the Dover Area School District. The "ID Policy" that the court completely banned was a school district requirement for reading a statement to the students that included a suggestion that they read the book: "The reference book, Of Pandas and People, is available for students who might be interested in gaining an understanding of what Intelligent Design actually involves."

Larry Fafarman
Los Angeles

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