Would you be so quick to support the STATE school if it were ONLY recognizing Creationist classes? Private institutions should and are able to pick and choose. Publicly funded schools should not violate the 1st amendment, which is what you're arguing.
Would you not gain a new and useful perspective if you attended a class on Taoism, taught from a doctrinal stance? I think these students would bring a DIVERSE perspective into a college class discussion and onto campus. But I guess diversity is only beneficial when it fits the confines of what the government and Ed consider the good kind of diversity.
Any course that depends completely on the textbook, as so many public and private recognized classes do, would have to be considered inferior to a course that includes other texts and materials. For example, the textbook from which I am forced to teach defines rights as "benefits and protections guaranteed by law." This definition confuses many of my students into thinking that government gives us our rights. But of course, since this is a government-approved text, you won't have any problem with students possessing this level of understanding gaining entrance into UC.
Also, for this reason and many others, I believe that state universities have outlived their necessity, and my libertarian side wishes that, here, as in so many realms, government would make its goal to be to eliminate its own existence. State schools should become self-sufficient,(If they're not capable why do they exist? think airline industry) and the benefit of additional attention and funding to K-12 would have untold advantages.

JP wrote:

Would you be so quick to support the STATE school if it were ONLY recognizing Creationist classes? Private institutions should and are able to pick and choose. Publicly funded schools should not violate the 1st amendment, which is what you're arguing.

I'm afraid I don't get the point of this. If a public university only accepted creationist classes for science credit, this would be an endorsement of the creationist position and a violation of the establishment clause. You seem to recognize that, but are you in fact denying it?

Would you not gain a new and useful perspective if you attended a class on Taoism, taught from a doctrinal stance? I think these students would bring a DIVERSE perspective into a college class discussion and onto campus. But I guess diversity is only beneficial when it fits the confines of what the government and Ed consider the good kind of diversity.

This case has nothing at all to do with the virtues of diversity (nor do I care much about diversity on college campuses at all; what I demand is excellence). The goal of having admission criteria is not to increase diversity, it is to insure that students have had adequate preparation for the coursework they will encounter at the university, and to insure that they are grading students on a reasonably objective basis when choosing who to admit. If the goal was something as vague as "diversity", then why not just admit a bunch of really bad students along with the good students? After all, that would be more "diverse" by that standard. Let's probe how far you would take this diversity criteria:

Let's say a Muslim Maddrasah has a science class that teaches that the Quran is the sole and only standard by which to judge the truth of ideas in science, and anywhere that science appears to contradict a literal interpretation of the Quran, science is wrong. Would you criticize a public university for not accepting that as a science credit because it reduces "diversity"?

Are there any standards for quality that you would accept in this context? By your reasoning, there would be no valid reason not to accept an astrology class as a science credit, or an earth science class that taught that the earth was flat and at the center of the universe. Surely the university has a right (I would argue a responsibility) to distinguish between these classes and legitimate science classes when determining which credits to accept and which not to accept.

Also, for this reason and many others, I believe that state universities have outlived their necessity, and my libertarian side wishes that, here, as in so many realms, government would make its goal to be to eliminate its own existence. State schools should become self-sufficient,(If they're not capable why do they exist? think airline industry) and the benefit of additional attention and funding to K-12 would have untold advantages.

You may well be right about this, but it has no bearing on the question of whether this lawsuit is legitimate or not, or the question of whether public universities can place reasonable criteria on which courses they admit for credit in admissions and which they don't.

The biology course uses a non-religious text but includes a discussion on creationism and "intelligent design''

If I'm reading this correctly--that UC is accepting for credit a class that discusses creationism and ID--then that gives me more reason to think that UC is not simply on a witch hunt against non-evolution.

However, I'm still not quite convinced that a student who gets a C in a standard biology class should get credit while a student who gets an A in a biology class which endorses creationism (but is in all other respects identical to the standard biology class) should be refused credit. If UC were to allow the latter student to prove his/her mastery of HS biology by examination, I would probably accept their policy.

Eric Seymour wrote:

However, I'm still not quite convinced that a student who gets a C in a standard biology class should get credit while a student who gets an A in a biology class which endorses creationism (but is in all other respects identical to the standard biology class) should be refused credit.

But that isn't the case here. This course is certainly not "in all other respects identical to the standard biology class." This entire course is built around young earth creationism. It's not just "standard biology plus a little creationism on the side", it's an explicitly YEC course and it is, as I said, bluntly anti-scientific. It's just absurd to think that a class should be given credit as a science course when its core premise is that anything in science that appears to conflict with one's predetermined religious views, regardless of how strong the evidence is, simply must be wrong. It's difficult to imagine how one could write a course more fundamentally opposed to the scientific method than this.