California Science Center Sued by American Freedom Alliance
Post #1 (in a brief series) – Why is one local nonprofit institution suing another?
In the December 29, 2009 Los Angeles Times Mike Boehm reported on a lawsuit brought against the California Science Center by the American Freedom Alliance (“California Science Center is sued for canceling a film promoting intelligent design”). This is a tale of one local nonprofit organization suing another. While not unprecedented, this is rare enough (and the California Science Center is prominent enough) to warrant news coverage in the Los Angeles Times.
I intend, in a brief series of posts over the next several days, to take a closer look at this dispute, which illustrates something of the breadth and diversity of the nonprofit sector. We often see the words ‘charity’ and ‘charities’ used in reference to nonprofit, voluntary and philanthropic activities, but to refer to a nonprofit institution as a charity can be misleading. Our traditional conception of a charity is an organization that provides help to the needy. While neither the California Science Center (or its 501(c)(3) affiliated foundation), nor the American Freedom Alliance is a charity in this sense, both are part of the nonprofit and voluntary sector. These organizations – while appearing to share broadly educational missions – are dedicated to disparate conceptions of the public good and dissimilar approaches to pursuing their missions; these differences have put them on a collision course.
This conflict also provides insight into the nature of our public discourse of contentious political and cultural issues, including the deliberate use of controversy to advance an organization’s goals. If the collision of these two organizations was not inevitable, it was – from the perspective on one side of the divide – a favorable outcome.
Finally, the broader philosophical (and cultural) issues in contention – representing a clash of science and theism – may seem to take us a bit far afield from the nonprofit sector: except that nonprofit institutions are at the heart of this public discourse. Nonprofits (and voluntary associations more generally) are essential institutions in sustaining democracy and the free exchange of ideas. [See Peter Frumkin, On Being Nonprofit: A Conceptual and Policy Primer (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002), Chapter 2, “Civic and Political Engagement” for discussion of nonprofits in democratic society.] Nonprofits on both sides of this debate are serving crucial roles.
I will begin (with this first post) with a description of the events that led to this legal dispute.
What happened
The American Freedom Alliance rented an auditorium at the California Science Center for an October 6, 2009 screening of a film, “Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record,” which challenges the theory of evolution and promotes intelligent design. The Smithsonian Institution complained that a news release touting the film falsely implied that the California Science Center is “a West Coast branch of the Smithsonian, and that the film showing is a Smithsonian event.” The Science Center also received email complaints about its perceived role as host of the presentation of “Darwin’s Dilemma,” which was characterized as “religious propaganda.”
The California Science Center canceled the screening, asserting that the news release violated terms of the rental agreement. The American Freedom Alliance alleges in its lawsuit that the cancellation violated its First Amendment rights as well as its contract to rent the auditorium. The Discovery Institute, which had issued the news release, followed up with a second lawsuit against the Science Center.
On the surface, we might think that the activities of the California Science Center, dedicated to educating children and adults about science, would be altogether compatible with the pursuits of the American Freedom Alliance, which promotes “Western values and ideals.” But just beneath the surface, we discover diametrically different agendas in play (and clashing values and ideals).
(Image of U.S. Supreme Court from Wikimedia Commons.)
Next post: California Science Center: A Public-Private Partnership
