The Constitutional Rights of Crackpots
Timothy Sandefur has a good post on the Institute for Creation Research’s absurd lawsuit against the state of Texas: ICR lawsuit against Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
The Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has filed a lawsuit against the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) for denying it authority to issue masters degrees in science education. The ICR, of course, is a young earth creationist outfit that recently moved to Texas from California. It’s been running what it calls a graduate school for several years, issuing worthless pieces of paper that it calls advanced degrees in various sciences. Sadly, the ICR’s “graduate school” was officially accredited by a nationally recognized accreditation agency—something I consider something of a scandal. But when ICR moved, it withdrew from that national accreditation because it expected that it would get accreditation from the state of Texas. That turned out not to happen: THECB unanimously denied ICR’s request for authority to grant degrees purporting to be scientific degrees.
Now ICR’s filed a federal lawsuit, and you can read the complaint here. It takes a while to download, given that it’s 67 single-spaced pages, and includes 86 footnotes, including one that takes up more than an entire page. It has all sorts of over-the-top grandstanding rhetoric that doesn’t belong in a complaint—complete with italics, boldfaced, underlining, delightful misspellings and malapropisms. (My favorite for you Blue Book experts out there, is in paragraph 67: “See, accord, 1st Timothy 6:20….”*) It’s entertaining in other ways. But these hardly make up for the pain of having to actually read the thing. Worst of all, the complaint does not break out separate causes of action, which makes it extremely difficult to understand the exact legal theories being advanced here…. Sort of typical of the sloppy thinking and the rhetorical tricks of creationists in scientific discourse as well.
But federal courts have liberal pleading rules, so judges will have to allow the case to proceed if it alleges facts sufficient to make out any cause of action, even if poorly pleaded. Let’s just say it’s the first time I’ve ever felt sorry for a federal judge.
