The lawsuit filed in 1998 by PLANS (People for Legal and Non-Sectarian Schools) against two California public school districts operating Waldorf-method schools is still pending, with a bench (non-jury) trial scheduled for September 12, 2005. The estimated length of the trial is sixteen days. Pursuant to a pretrial conference held on February 11, 2005, the Court on April 20 issued an order outlining the trial issues and the evidentiary and procedural guidelines for trial.

Recent motions filed by the school district Defendants resulted in the exclusion of eleven of PLANS’ witnesses for failure to make timely disclosure to Defendants and 101 of PLANS’ exhibits as a result of discovery sanctions.

The Court will conduct a bifurcated trial, first addressing the issue of whether anthroposophy is a religion. The Anthroposophical Society in America submitted an amicus brief on this issue which was accepted by the Court in July of 2004. The legal brief is available at www.anthroposophy.org/NewsEvents.

If the Court determines at trial that anthroposophy is a religion, it will proceed to issues related to whether the Waldorf inspired methodology employed by the concerned schools advances and promotes anthroposophy and results in an excessive entanglement with anthroposophy.

The school districts may call Dr. Douglas Sloan as an expert witness on this issue. PLANS has no expert witness.

Katherine Thivierge,
Attorney at Law,
April 26,2005

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