Larry Caldwell

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Larry Caldwell, a pro-intelligent design activist and attorney, has been active in bringing litigation in causes supporting the intelligent design movement.

Caldwell, and his wife Jeanne Caldwell, of Roseville, California, operate as Quality Science Education for All (QSEA) and focus on challenging evolution as taught in public schools using the Discovery Institute's Teach the Controversy method to discredit evolution while promoting intelligent design in public school science curricula.

In the spring of 2005 he sued the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), and its director, Eugenie Scott, alleging that Scott and the center made false claims in an article she published in California Wild,^[1] the magazine of the California Academy of Sciences.

The suit claimed that Scott misstated that Larry Caldwell had proposed the names of two creationist books to his local school board and that Scott incorrectly stated the date of the Georgia evolution disclaimers and misspelled a party's last name. The suit was abandoned by Caldwell. According to Scott, she was never served with papers for the suit.^[2] This event was seized upon by the organization driving the intelligent design movement, the Discovery Institute, to discredit their opponents, the NCSE and Scott.^[3] The QSEA and the Discovery Institute have collaborated on a number of occasions on other projects related to the movement.

In October 2005 Caldwell filed suit in California federal court claiming that he was unconstitutionally denied access to various forums to promote his "Quality Science Education" proposals. In Caldwell v. Roseville Joint Union High School District Caldwell alleged free speech, establishment clause, due process and equal protection violations because his proposals were not placed on the School Board's agenda, his complaints about the school district's biology textbook were rejected, and his proposals were not placed on the agenda of the Curriculum Instruction Team in his chlidren's high school. In September 2007 the California federal district court dismissed Caldwell's suit.^[4] In granting summary judgment to the school district, the court emphasized that "this case is not about whether a theory of intelligent design can or should be included in the science curriculum.... Rather, this case is about whether Larry Caldwell was denied access to speak in various fora or participate in certain processes because of his actual or perceived religious beliefs."^[5] Caldwell received material assistance with his efforts with the school district's board from the Discovery Institute's Cornelius Hunter.

Also in October 2005 Caldwell filed suit in federal court against the University of California, Berkeley, claiming their website Understanding Evolution^[6] violated separation of church and state by linking to sites which claim that religious faith is compatible with evolution. In March, 2006 the court granted the school's motion to dismiss the suit on the basis that the plaintiffs failed to establish that they suffered any restriction of their freedom of speech or religion.^[7]^[8]

Though much smaller in scale than such public interest legal organizations as Thomas More Law Center or the Alliance Defense Fund, the Caldwells had in 2005 brought no fewer than three separate lawsuits to further the intelligent design movement's agenda. Observers of the movement say Caldwell is a vexatious litigant,^[9] known for "his hair-trigger willingness to sue people for just about anything, in the cause of ID creationism."^[10]