A Kansas-based creationist group has lost its latest challenge to science curriculum standards that teach evolution as fact.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April that Citizens for Objective Public Education (COPE) had not adequately proved its members were harmed by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). A district court judge dismissed COPE’s original complaint in 2014.
COPE filed suit to block implementation of the NGSS in 2013, arguing that the standards promoted atheism to children and therefore violated the First Amendment. According to COPE’s complaint, the standards require teachers to take children “into the religious sphere by leading them to ask ultimate religious questions like what is the cause and nature of life and the universe – ‘where do we come from?’”
“The purpose of the indoctrination is to establish the religious Worldview, not to deliver to an age appropriate audience an objective and religiously neutral origins science education that seeks to inform,” the complaint asserted.
The case is COPE v. Board of Education.
