Lulu of the Week: The Lawyers Always Win

Hat tip to Ebonmuse at Daylight Atheism: His take is here

And another hat tip to Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, who sums up here

Also arthurvandelay at Five Public Opinions, here.

The Association of Christian Schools International has lost its lawsuit against the University of California in which it charged UC with unfairly denying admissions credit to students whose schools used certain textbooks containing content which, let's put it nicely, did not meet UC's requirements.

On second thought, let's put it less nicely: The textbooks are Christian Crap(TM).  The history text in question claims that the USA was founded by Christians for Christians and anyway you needn't believe the history book because you can look it up in the Bible, so there.  The introduction to the biology text insists, "If the conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."

The plaintiffs had two complaints: One, they said UC's standards were unconstitutional on their face, a simple violation of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion.  The judge dismissed that charge earlier in the spring -- late March/early April, I think -- on grounds that a school has the right to determine which students are eligible for admission and having reasonable standards in place for the purpose of making such determinations does not infringe on anyone's freedom to believe in an imaginary friend who gets mad when you play with yourself.  (Of course the judge's language in his ruling was more, um, judicial than mine.)

Two, the plaintiffs said that UC's application of its standards amounted to religious discrimination in practice.  (And they helpfully coined the non-ironic term "viewpoint discrimination" for our delectation.)  Apparently, though, they weren't prepared to argue the case for this charge, because -- and they admitted this in court -- they had expected the judge to find in their favor on the first charge, so they didn't submit any evidence to back up the second charge!

Maybe they thought that if they said the right magic words, the judge would wake up one morning and begin writing, "We find for the plaintiff..."

Either these godidiots genuinely expected the court to favor them because of their alleged Christanishness, or they expected to lose so they could add another sob story of Christian Persecution to the American urban legend collection.

But I wonder.

Their lawyer is William Bird of Edwards v Aguillard fame.  He's a godidiot but he's also an experienced lawyer and you'd think that his expensive advice would have included -- at a minimum -- instructions for his associates to do their homework before showing up in court.  

Unless he plans to save the real arguments for the appeals court?  -- Which is where the case is now headed.

I dunno.  But in any case, there's a lesson for those who choose to take their grievances to the law: The lawyers always get paid no matter who wins.