I’m not going to rehash the entire spectacle involving the Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Directors (in California). You can read the entire story here.

But here are the main points: The board was promoting Christianity at meetings. The Freedom From Religion Foundation sued them in 2014 and the board lost the case in 2016. So they appealed. Then, last July, a three-judge panel on an Appeals Court unanimously upheld the earlier decision. FFRF won again. So the board asked the entire Appeals Court to rehear the case. Last month, the Appeals Court said hell no.

The question remained: Would the board be stupid enough to ask the Supreme Court to take up their case — and pay the price (literally) if they were rejected? (Haven’t the students in the district suffered enough for the irresponsible actions of the board members?)

Now we have an answer to that. On Thursday, the board voted 3-2 to stop appealing the ruling and just accept the losses.

Why the change in attitude? You can thank a change in the makeup of the board. One of the three irresponsible board members, Sylvia Orozco, didn’t run for re-election last November. She was replaced by someone who knew fighting this case was idiotic. (Spoiler: Elections matter.)

FFRF is celebrating their now-official victory:

“We’re so pleased reason and our Constitution have prevailed in protecting the rights of students and parents to be free from proselytizing by their school board,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “The fact that we had so many members of the community with us shows how the school board was riding roughshod over the rights of students.”

FFRF also notes that the costs and fees for the school board were $200,000 for the initial case, and an additional $75,000 for the appeal. That’s a quarter-million dollars of money the board could have saved if only they had listened to the atheists who understood the law better than they did. They were blinded by their Christianity and they should be ashamed of themselves.

By the way, at the same meeting when they voted against the Supreme Court appeal, the ringleader of the Irresponsible Caucus, Andrew Cruz, took time at the end of the meeting to spread anti-vaccination hysteria. He mentioned that getting vaccines had something to do with the increased prevalence of autism… when every scientist knows damn well there’s never been an established, causal link between the two.

… Parents, if your gut tells you that… it tells you that if you feel this hesitant of giving vaccines to your son or daughter, I advise that you do research. I think that’s very important, to listen to your gut, and listen to that well… And the numbers are increasing, and there might be evidence that certain vaccines may be causing autism.

All of that bullshit comes from the mouth of a man who runs a school district and has actively hurt the taxpayers and children he’s supposed to represent. He’s an ignorant man who insists he’s smart, in part because he’s a Christian.

It took more than four years for his illegal actions regarding prayer finally hit a wall. Now he’s found a different way to spread nonsense.

