Publisher May Not Intervene In Intelligent Design Litigation

There has been another procedural development in the Pennsylvania federal district court litigation challenging the Dover Area School District's promotion of intelligent design in school classrooms. (See prior postings 1 , 2 , 3). On Wednesday, the court refused to permit the Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE), publisher of the leading book on Intelligent Design, to intervene in the case. FTE claimed that if the court found Intelligent Design Theory to be "religious", it would lose substantial sales of its book, Pandas and People, and of a new book it is about to publish, The Design of Life: Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems. In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Sch. Dist., the court held that the motion to intervene was untimely, that the publisher's interest in the case was insufficient to permit intervention, and at any rate its interests were being adequately represented in the litigation.