A bill to repeal the controversial Louisiana Science Education Act is collecting more supporters outside the Capitol. A bill to repeal the controversial Louisiana Science Education Act is collecting more supporters outside the Capitol.
This week, the group Change.org posted an on-line petition supporting repeal of the LSEA; at last count the petition had more than 61,000 signatures. This comes on the heels of the New Orleans City Council voting unanimously last week to endorse Senate Bill 70 by Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, D-New Orleans. Peterson pre-filed the bill.
Repeal of the LSEA, which opponents characterize as a back-door effort to introduce Intelligent Design and creationism into Louisiana high school biology classes, has also enjoyed recent support by The American Association for the Advancement of Science, The Clergy Letter Project and, most famously, more than 40 Nobel laureates in the sciences.
The LSEA, however, enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support when it cleared the Legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2008. Every member of Lafayette's legislative delegation from both chambers voted in favor of it. Peterson's bill has been languishing in the Senate Education Committee since the start of the session.