Salon.com > Julie Carr Smyth

Ohio court spars with lawyers in school Bible case

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 18:24:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — In a heated hour of arguments, Ohio Supreme Court justices sparred with lawyers Wednesday over the extent to which a now-fired public school science teacher had the right to push his personal religious beliefs in class.

A lawyer for the school board that dismissed John Freshwater in 2011 said he waved a Bible at his students, handed out religious pamphlets and espoused creationism in his evolution lessons.

Freshwater violated the constitutional separation between church and state and was rightfully fired, said David Smith, an attorney for the Mount Vernon School Board.

"You can't teach evolution from a Christian perspective" without violating constitutional protections against government establishment of religion, he said.

Freshwater's attorney, Rita Dunaway, said accounts of Freshwater's class conduct were exaggerated and that the instructor was exercising his academic freedom to explore controversial ideas.

"A Bible on a desk hidden amongst other clutter does not a religious display make," she said.

Dunaway said Freshwater had a laudable teaching record and his students scored well on standardized science tests.

Colleges may ban smoking

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 07:45:00 +0000

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — As a political science major at Ohio State University, Ida Seitter says, she lit up many a cigarette to help her through the stress of exam season. Right or wrong, they were her security blanket as she toiled through college.

Seitter, now 26, was old enough by then to make her own decisions, she says. She opposes efforts by policymakers in Ohio, New York, California and other states to impose bans on tobacco use not just in buildings at public colleges, but also anywhere on the campus — even in the open air.

"Just back away from me a little bit. I won't blow it in your face and I'll try not to be rude," Seitter says. "At the same time, I think it's a little discriminatory for a practice that is considered legal."

Bans on use, advertising and sales of tobacco in all its forms are being enacted or considered at perhaps half of campuses nationwide, sometimes over the objections of student smokers, staff and faculty. The movement is driven by mounting evidence of the health risks of secondhand smoke, the reduced costs of smoke-free dorms and a drive to minimize enticements to smoke at a critical age for forming lifelong habits.

AIG agrees to pay $725M in settlement

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:23:00 +0000

American Insurance Group Inc. and some of its directors and officers have agreed to a $725 million settlement to resolve allegations of wide-ranging fraud laid out in a class action suit led by three Ohio pension funds.

Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray said Friday the latest figure will combine with previous AIG settlements to pay about $1 billion to investors, including firefighters, teachers, librarians and other pensioners. He characterized it as the 10th largest settlement of its kind in the U.S.

The lawsuit alleged anti-competitive market division, accounting violations, and stock price manipulation by AIG between October 1999 and April 2005.

ACORN gives up Ohio business license

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:21:00 +0000

The community organizing group ACORN has agreed to give up its Ohio business license and not return under another name, as it has in other states, under a settlement struck with a libertarian center that sued it.

U.S. District Judge Herman Weber, in Cincinnati, signed off on the deal, which settles claims brought by the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law against ACORN's voter registration practices. Other terms of the deal are confidential.

The center alleged in a lawsuit filed in 2008 that ACORN's voter registration drives amounted to organized crime because the group turned in a pattern of fraudulent forms.

Center attorney Maurice Thompson said restricting ACORN's ability to support or enable other groups to "do what they do" was crucial to the deal, especially in a state he characterized as "ground zero" to their voter advocacy efforts.

"It carries a great deal of significance because, in the absence of that term, ACORN could simply have shut down but reopened the next day as WALNUT or CHESTNUT or whatever and done the exact same thing," Thompson said. "So our goal was to affect permanent change."

In other states, including New York and California, ACORN chapters have disbanded and resumed operations under new names.