Here are a few unrelated school news developments:
Turnitin.com: Over at The Edjurist Accord blog, Justin Bathon has tipped us off about the dismissal of a copyright lawsuit brought by students against the company that operates Turnitin.com, an anti-plagiarism Web site. Education Week reported last year on the filing of the lawsuit, which said the company was infringing the rights of students who were required by their schools to submit essays for analysis in Turnitin.com’s database. The ruling dismissing the suit is here.
Michigan Girls’ Athletics: A federal judge has ordered the Michigan High School Athletic Association to pay $4.4 million in legal fees to the plaintiffs in a long-running lawsuit that challenged the governing body’s scheduling of girls’ sports, the Associated Press reports here.
About a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the MHSAA’s appeal of lower-court rulings finding that it had discriminated against girls’ sports. Girls’ basketball, for example, was scheduled in fall instead of the traditional winter season, which was a disadvantage for girls when it came to college scholarship opportunities, the lawsuit alleged.
UPDATE: How Appealing has posted the judge’s ruling here.
“In God We Trust": A Dallas-area school will put the U.S. motto back on a gymnasium wall after it was painted over when one parent objected, the AP reports here.
The Supreme Court has not ruled definitively on the display of “In God We Trust” in public schools. But in his concurring opinion in 2004 in Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, a case dealing with “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, then-Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said the appearance of “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency and Congress’ adoption of it as the national motto in 1956 were among several things that “strongly suggest that our national culture allows public recognition of our nation’s religious history and character.”
I’ve often wondered if schools were barred from any display of “In God We Trust,” would that mean no one could take money out of their pockets during the school day?