{"id":532,"date":"2008-04-07T21:30:05","date_gmt":"2008-04-08T01:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.flascience.org\/wp\/?p=532"},"modified":"2008-08-31T16:31:48","modified_gmt":"2008-08-31T20:31:48","slug":"judiciary-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=532","title":{"rendered":"Judiciary review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve pulled out the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee pre-meeting review of Senate Bill 2692 (the deceptively named “academic freedom” bill) from the looooong meeting packet and uploaded it here<\/a> for your reading pleasure. (Original document here<\/a>, scroll to page 155.) If senators bother to actually read the document before the Tuesday morning meeting, it would show how how shaky the bill’s legality is. Some excerpts:<\/p>\n

The bill is silent on who determines whether the teacher’s presentation on scientific information meets the definition and is therefore afforded protection under the act. Presumably, the determination would be made by the school district, but this is not stated. Additionally, the definition appears to encompass a wide range of information within the protected presentation by the teacher. The bill suggests that the only requirement is that the information is relevant to the science standards pertaining to evolution, and that the information is presented objectively. Again the bill is silent on who defines the objectivity of the scientific information presented. The administration and the teacher may have different views on the objectiveness of the information presented.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is unclear under the bill if a student’s performance in a science class will be measured upon his or her own view or position on evolution, or by a consistent standard applied to each student. The ambiguity may create unanticipated problems with student evaluation and grading in science classes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It should also be noted that, because evolution and countervailing theories are subject to intense controversy, objective presentation of scientific information critical of the theory of evolution may be difficult to achieve in the classroom. If at any point objectivity is abandoned, it is possible that a court could determine that the state is promoting religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m not too happy with the above paragraph. There are no “countervailing theories”, and the only “intense controversy” is in the general public’s and politicians’ eyes, not among the consensus of the scientific community.<\/p>\n

While a student maintains free speech rights, as indicated above, those rights are not without limitation. It appears that this provision in the bill may be interpreted to expand the rights of students in excess of the First Amendment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A teacher’s statements in class during instructional periods are part of the curriculum and regular class activity and thus subject to reasonable speech regulation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above sentence directly addresses the very lie of this “academic freedom” bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve pulled out the Florida Senate Judiciary Committee pre-meeting review of Senate Bill 2692 (the deceptively named “academic freedom” bill) from the looooong meeting packet and uploaded it here for your reading pleasure. (Original document here, scroll to page 155.) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcZNLl-8A","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":528,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=528","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":0},"title":"Senate Judiciary committee meeting scheduled","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Judiciary Committee's staff review is here. Our post tracking both the Senate and House bills is here. The Florida Senate Judiciary committee will consider SB2692, the creationism bill (so-called \"academic freedom\"): On Committee agenda-- Judiciary, 04\/08\/08, 10:45 am, 110-S I've been calling the committee members. Have you?","rel":"","context":"In "\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08"","block_context":{"text":"\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=23"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":496,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=496","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":1},"title":"Tracking the bills","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"May 2, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"This is a summary\/tracking post that was updated throughout the Florida legislative session concerning two anti-evolution bills that were introduced in the Senate and House. Fortunately, the bills never made it into law in 2008. STATE SENATE SB 2692 Teaching Chemical and Biological Evolution; Cites act as the \"Academic Freedom\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08"","block_context":{"text":"\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=23"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":527,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=527","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":2},"title":"Senate bill gets new co-introducer","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 3, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Creationism bill (so-called \"academic freedom\")\u00c2\u00a0SB 2692 recently picked up a new co-introducer: Senator Carey Baker. Note that he is on the Judiciary committee, which will be reviewing the bill at some date in the near future.","rel":"","context":"In "\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08"","block_context":{"text":"\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=23"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":533,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=533","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":3},"title":"Bad news … again","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"April 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"In a move that\u00c2\u00a0now sends the deceptively named \"academic freedom\" bill to the Florida Senate floor, the Senate judiciary committee voted 6-3 to approve it. It looks like some Democrats can see the potential (almost guaranteed) lawsuit pitfalls to come, but the bill marches on nonetheless. I'll have more later\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08"","block_context":{"text":"\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=23"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":517,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=517","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":4},"title":"Don’t Panic","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I have a little bit of an eyewitness account of what happened in the Senate Pre-K - 12 committee today concerning the creationism bill (\"academic freedom\") SB2692. But before I get to that I want to tell you: Don't Panic. Today's committee meeting was just one hurdle. The bill was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08"","block_context":{"text":"\"Academic Freedom\" bills '08","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=23"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2582,"url":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?p=2582","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":5},"title":"Religious Liberties bill passes Senate education committee","author":"Brandon Haught","date":"March 6, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A bill that is potentially harmful to science education in Florida schools was reported favorably (in other words, it passed) by the Senate education committee today. The Religious Liberties bill was passed on a party-line vote of 5-2. The Senate bill still has to get through a judiciary committee meeting,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Religious Liberties Act 2017"","block_context":{"text":"Religious Liberties Act 2017","link":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/?cat=33"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flascience.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}