The long-awaited ruling on the Dover "intelligent design" trial came yesterday, and the results were bad for ID—and good for democracy. They were good for those who read the Bible, those who read Darwin, and those who never read anything. This was a triumph for the Constitution, so it is one we all can share.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones 3d ruled that the Dover Area School Board may not order teachers to read a statement about intelligent design in school biology classes on evolution. ID is a theory that questions Charles Darwin's account of evolution and posits that an "intelligent designer" must have directed the development of life forms on Earth.

The backbreaker was the judge's ruling, amply backed up by trial testimony, that ID is simply not science. Jones pointed out that a main pro-ID scientist, Lehigh biochemist Michael Behe, had hinged his argument on belief in God. Since no other scientific proposition rests on belief in a deity, "Professor Behe's assertion constitutes substantial evidence that in his view... ID is a religious and not a scientific proposition." Oops!

The judge ruled that, since ID is religious rather than scientific, the Dover school board violated the First Amendment's ban on government favoritism toward any particular religious belief in its ID vote last year. (Almost all who voted for ID either have left the board or lost in last November's elections.)

Jones went further. He declared—in a resounding, bitter defeat for ID proponents—that this theory is really little more than a devious rejiggering of old-time creationism.

Some school board members even had lied, complained Jones, to hide their real motives. "The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy," he wrote. Ouch!

So ends what many called the 2005 version of the 1925 Scopes Trial. Except in 2005, creationism lost and evolution won—a better result.

Public school science classes should teach children about science—not science as special-interest groups want it to be (as in Dover) or as they redefine it (as the Kansas state school board just did). ID is a religious belief, and can be respected as such. Only when it pretends to be science does it deserve the kind of scorn this ruling gives it. Scientific evidence is the same, no matter which of the 50 states you're in. If science becomes a political plaything, our children could end up learning only one group's idea of the universe—which would make them less free.

Jones said ID's pedigree—its close resemblance to creationism—is pretty obvious. Teaching about "gaps" and "problems" in evolution—these are "religious strategies that evolved from earlier forms of creationism." Note the ironic verb.

The ruling may be appealed. But on the face of it, this judgment seems quite a setback for advocates who claim that ID is scientifically based and constitutionally sound.

ID in Dover was quite a story. The cast of characters includes zealous Christians who got on a local school board, pressured teachers, and finally get their friendly vote. It includes teachers in the Dover schools who spunkily defended their sense of what their students deserved.

And it includes a think tank called the Discovery Institute, which has cleverly spread the gospel of ID, and the Thomas More Law Center of Ann Arbor, Mich. This self-described "sword and shield for people of faith" jumped into the Dover situation to create a long-sought test case on ID. It includes the Dover parents who organized a grassroots campaign that swept to victory in the last election, changing the school board's balance.

Those responsible for the now-defunct policy have failed in Dover, comprehensively and in detail. Perhaps not finally, though. Democracy is a process; little is final. Besides, ID still has friends in the highest places. Like the White House.

What shines forth today is the strength and clarity of the Constitution, how easily it exposed this attempt to swap sound science for one group's creed. How beautiful this document is, which allows all Americans to worship or not, believe or not, see intelligent design in the cosmos or not. The First Amendment smiles on public schooling that favors no one special-interest group; it encourages a shared culture of learning, not one that makes our children walking experiments in political chicanery. By derailing an abuse of liberty, Jones' decision affirmed the liberty of all Americans.