Editor’s update: We’ve had some questions about this April 1 article, asking, among other things, why our news service is the only one to have reported it. After all, $200 billion is a lot of money. We are currently directing inquiries here for further information.

Editor’s update 2: In other words, the following was published as an April Fools’ Day gag. It was intended as humor. The content is not true.

American students who took high school or college biology courses between 2001 and 2018 have won a class action lawsuit against textbook publishers and authors, as well as high schools and colleges, that taught them falsehoods about the evidence for evolution.

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Agassiz Hodge ordered several biology textbook publishers and authors to set aside $100 billion to settle claims that the plaintiffs were defrauded by lies promoting the doctrine that all living things are accidental by-products of purposeless evolution. Judge Hodge found that the doctrine is actually materialistic philosophy disguised as empirical science, and that the textbook “evidence” for it had been knowingly exaggerated, misrepresented, or even faked. The plaintiffs represent millions of current and former students.

Judge Hodge also ordered more than 14,000 public school districts and almost 3,000 colleges to set aside an additional $100 billion. He said the plaintiffs had “overwhelming evidence” on their side.

The plaintiffs originally sued to recover damages from as far back as 1959, but Judge Hodge ruled that they could only sue for damages suffered after the publication of Jonathan Wells’s landmark book, Icons of Evolution, which was published at the end of 2000.

Dr. Wells, who testified at the trial, said afterwards, “This is very gratifying. Many former high school and college biology students — some of whom were required to spend thousands of dollars on tuition and high-priced biology textbooks — have told me they wished they could get a refund for their miseducation. Now maybe they’ll get some of their money back.” Wells added that he will not receive anything from the settlement.

Postcards have already been sent to over 200 million high school and college students and graduates, inviting them to provide documentation that they were assigned one or more of the many textbooks named in the lawsuit. The U.S. Postal Service has set aside an entire floor of its headquarters in Washington, D.C., to handle the expected flood of responses.

Meanwhile, the defendants are calling the decision “the end of civilization as we know it,” and they vow to appeal. Supporting them in the appeal will be the American Association for the Abuse of Science (AAAS), the American Association of Unhinged Professors (AAUP), the National Center for Science Extermination (NCSE), and the American Censorship and Lies Union (ACLU).

Photo credit: SchoolPRPro, via Pixabay.