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bratboy wrote:

resedit wrote:

A big difference.

What difference would it make to you.  What, do you think that the university simply refuses to inform plaintiffs what their courses are missing?

What were they missing?
That's been asked a bunch of times with no answers.

resedit wrote:

bratboy wrote:

resedit wrote:

A big difference.

What difference would it make to you.  What, do you think that the university simply refuses to inform plaintiffs what their courses are missing?

What were they missing?
That's been asked a bunch of times with no answers.

It has been answered numerous times, just not to this artificial level of specificity that you decided to begin demanding (after previously proclaiming the ruling incorrect despite not having any of the facts whatsoever at your disposal, apparently). 

Text of the ruling.

Here's a link to all the court filings for the case.

I've already explained to you that the specifics are not at issue because the court will not second-guess them.  Read.  Understand:

Defendants' course approval decisions are subject to rational basis review. Under rational basis review, government regulation is "accorded a strong presumption of validity."  Rationality review "is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of government regulation." FCC v. Beach Commc'ns, Inc., 508 U.S. 307, 313(1993); see also City of New Orleans v. Dukes, 427 U.S. 297, 303 (1976) ("[T]he judiciary may not sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy determinations."). "The burden is on the one attacking the [regulation] to negative every conceivable basis which might support it." Lenhausen v. Lake Shore Auto Parts Co., 410 U.S. 356,364 (1973); see also Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000) ("When conducting rational basis review the court will not overturn . . . government action unless [it] is so unrelated to the achievement of any combination of legitimate purposes that the court can only conclude that the government's actions were irrational.").

"When judges are asked to review the substance of a genuinely academic decision . . . , they should show great respect for the faculty's professional judgment." "Plainly, [courts] may not override [this judgment] unless it is such a substantial departure from accepted academic norms as to demonstrate that the person
or committee responsible did not actually exercise professional judgment."

All of the standards that the expert witnesses were looking for are outlined in their reports, such as this one. (Hint: just scroll down and read the conclusion if you don't want to read the whole thing.)

D'Eyncourt wrote:

Quite frankly: why are you bothering to continuing arguing with resedit? He isn't interested in reality--he only wants to argue his arguments regardless of the fact that they have almost nothing to do with the case involved. He's made up his mind and anything which goes against his POV is ignored.

No it isn't!

Here's a question -

As a California Tax Payer who is funding the UC system, do I have a right to know the specific criteria they use when determining whether or not a textbook meets their standards?

resedit wrote:

Not artificial.
If it is subjective, then there is a whole lot of room for bias.
That is why I want specifics - what specifically is the textbook lacking?

You don't care. 

I have repeatedly posted excerpts from the case, and comments from the experts at issue.  I've given you links to ALL the expert testimony, and to the all of the information that the university carries on its website.

Had you looked at any of the information linked to, you'd know exactly what information you were looking for.  I'm not going to bother presenting it to you, because you'll simply ignore the post.  That's you usual tactic in any debate in which the facts aren't on your side and yet you keep at it anyway in an attempt to save face. 

The University lays out the criteria.  If they determine that a course doesn't conform to their requirements, the school is free to change that course...or not receive credit for it.  The court has ruled that the university can legally set such requirements, and furthermore the courts will give great deference to such academic decisions. 

The plaintiffs claimed (with no evidence to support it) that a handful of courses were rejected out of animus (look it up) towards religion.  The university need only demonstrate a rational basis for their requirements.  For the biology course, the university and their outside experts found that the course lacked sufficient coverage of the scientific method, evolution, and did not demand critical thinking.  A number of other religious schools have rejected the text for similar reasons.  All of this information is available in the expert testimony. 

Rationality review "is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic of government regulation."

"The burden is on the one attacking the [regulation] to negative every conceivable basis which might support it."

"When conducting rational basis review the court will not overturn . . . government action unless [it] is so unrelated to the achievement of any combination of legitimate purposes that the court can only conclude that the government's actions were irrational."

Thus, your take on their course requirements is wholly irrelevant to the decision of this court.  Perhaps you think that the California legislature should require state universities to accept ANY class, no matter how deficient, simply because it has a religious theme.  That's fine.  However, the law here is pretty clear:  The First Amendment does not shield a course from being rejected for obviously rational reasons (this is not to mention that you've completely avoided considering ANY other challenged course besides this biology text).

Despite apparently have zero knowledge of the facts here (and obviously not caring enough to educate yourself), you still made some pretty broad pronouncements about the decision.  Now how does that work?

As noted by the fact that some of the courses were simply rejected for not being "upper level" or not having a prerequisite (the plaintiff's own experts found this to be reasonable), while others failed for focusing on anthologies instead of full-length works (the plaintiff's own experts also found this to be reasonable).  The history course was rejected for, among other things, a failure to teach historical analytic methods (the plaintiff's own expert did not suggest that this was unreasonable).  Many other courses were accepted.  There's no crusade against Christianity here, no matter how much some would like to concoct one. 


For the biology course, the plaintiff's expert said only that it "mentions standard scientific content."  He "did not consider how much detail or depth" was given to those subjects.  Thus:

Therefore, Professor Behe fails to refute one of Professor Kennedy's primary concerns that the nature of science, the theory of evolution, and critical thinking are not taught adequately. Accordingly, there is no genuine issue of material fact as to this issue. Defendants had a rational basis for rejecting Calvary Baptist's proposed Biology course.

Thats right.  UC rejected the courses because they were run by dumb doody heads.  READ THE TRANSCRIPTS!

resedit wrote:

Here's a question -

As a California Tax Payer who is funding the UC system, do I have a right to know the specific criteria they use when determining whether or not a textbook meets their standards?

Case in point: this question has nothing to do with this court case (unless, I guess, resedit was one of the people approving the textbooks used by the religious school filing the case).

So, bratboy, the basic claim here is if you can pray you can be admitted to the university?