Cobb County’s school board will appeal a federal court ruling against its anti-evolution stickers on the basis that it is an intrusion of local control of schools. If you’ll recall your Georgia history from back in the 1960s, eventual Georgia governor Lester Maddox used the same tactic to justify segregating black people from his PickRick restaurant, saying the government was infringing on his right as a private business man to operate his business the way he wanted to. The difference between Maddox’s restaurant and the Cobb County school board is, you guessed it, Maddox’s restaurant wasn’t funded by taxpayer dollars. As a taxpayer-funded school board, it is held accountable to laws a private business would not be held accountable for, one of which being it cannot endorse religion.

(Disclosure: My grandfather was a close personal friend of Lester Maddox, whom I generally consider to be a better man than he was given credit for. Despite his inflammatory rhetoric, he hired more minorities to state positions than any governor before him. Jimmy Carter ran as a segregationist early in his political career, if you’ll recall, and now he’s some sort of uber diplomat.)

I was ready to bitch about the board spending more taxpayer dollars on the appeal as well, but attorney Glenn Brock apparently will pursue all further action free of charge to the school board, which has already paid his firm $74,000. That’s money which could have paid for:

But if a doctor cuts the wrong hand off during surgery or your wife saws your scrotum off with a buzzsaw in your sleep it’s a frivolous lawsuit. Riiiggggghhhtttt…

I read about the board’s decision first on Joe Winter’s site last night, and there’s an AJC article (login) as well.