Mainstream Media Now Picking up on Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit Against NASA’s JPL

Last week we reported on a discrimination lawsuit filed on behalf of JPL employee David Coppedge. Over the weekend the San Gabriel Valley Tribune ran a lengthy story reporting on the suit. After Coppedge discussed intelligent design with JPL scientists, his supervisors told him to stop discussing religion. Last April Coppedge’s bosses demoted him. Coppedge had been a leader on the system administrator team for the Cassini mission, according to the suit. The paper also reports that after being ordered by his superiors at JPL to stop talking about intelligent design, Coppedge did just that. Even more interesting is this: Earlier this month Coppedge claims he met with his supervisors, who told him that the written warning was inappropriate and Read More ›

JPL Discrimination Lawsuit Latest in Long String of Free-Speech on Evolution Controversies

Former Jet Propulsion Laboratory Team Lead, David Coppedge’s case is only the most recent of a series of similar free-speech controversies, including: The California Science Center in Los Angeles, a state agency, is currently entangled in a pair of lawsuits following its discriminatory cancellation of a contract with a private non-profit group to screen a film for the public on intelligent design. At Iowa State University in 2006, supervisors denied tenure to and forced out a distinguished astrophysicist for co-authoring a book on intelligent-design in cosmology. At the Smithsonian Institution in 2005, supervisors investigated, harassed and demoted an evolutionary biologist for editing a pro-intelligent design article in a peer-reviewed technical journal. At the University of Idaho in 2005, the university’s Read More ›

How NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Punished David Coppedge for His Views on Intelligent Design

David Coppedge has worked on the Cassini mission since 1997. In 2000 he earned recognition for excellence, receiving the important role of “Team Lead SA” (system administrator), a role he held until his demotion in 2009. SAs oversee 200 Unix workstations, several high-capacity data storage units, networking equipment, and other specialized computing equipment across America and Europe. He has a wide breadth of knowledge about technical aspects of Cassini’s computers and networks and was heavily involved in all the mission operations. Coppedge has been a faithful and highly regarded JPL employee for many years, has led tours of the lab and has served as an outreach speaker presenting the Cassini findings to civic and astronomy clubs and school groups. Now, Read More ›

What You Can Do to Help David Coppedge’s Fight for Academic Freedom

UPDATED 01-27-2011 It’s an outrage that JPL employee David Coppedge was harassed and discriminated against for his pro-intelligent design views, but you can help him. If you want to stand up for academic freedom, this man needs to hear from you: Get ready now to call (preferably) or at least email Charles Bolden, NASA’s administrator, to express your outrage at the fact that Coppedge was fired this week. Here’s that contact information: phone: 202-358-1010; email: charles.bolden@nasa.gov. Your voice has an impact in this debate — make sure it gets heard!

Discrimination Lawsuit Filed against NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab for Harassing and Demoting Supporter of Intelligent Design

Supervisors at NASA’s prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) illegally harassed and demoted a high-level computer system administrator for expressing support of intelligent design to co-workers, according to a discrimination lawsuit filed in California Superior Court. The lawsuit was filed by attorneys on behalf of David Coppedge, an information technology specialist and system administrator on JPL’s Cassini mission to Saturn, the most ambitious interplanetary exploration ever launched. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a NASA laboratory managed by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) where robotic planetary spacecraft, such as the Mars Rovers, are built and operated. Coppedge was a “Team Lead” Systems Administrator on the Cassini mission until JPL demoted him for allegedly “pushing religion” by loaning interested co-workers DVDs supportive Read More ›