Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek Elementary School, filed suit in November 2004, alleging the district and its personnel had discriminated against him because he is a Christian.

Williams is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund--a foundation funded largely by evangelical Christians. His lawsuit, centering on the separation of church and state in schools and proselytizing in the classroom, has drawn international attention.

As a result, The New Yorker writer Peter J. Boyer found himself intrigued by the story. In addition to the issue of faith in public schools, Boyer found the Cupertino community a compelling piece of the story.

"It struck me as an unlikely place to see this kind of divide," Boyer said from New York in a telephone interview with the Cupertino Courier. "Cupertino obviously prides itself on tolerance, and religion is not necessarily manifested [in the city] in the most obvious ways."

"I remember the media bombardment," Boyer said of first hearing about the case on the radio. In particular, Boyer noticed a media divide on the lawsuit, with the national network news and CNN largely ignoring it. Fox News Channel, however, did not. In early December the Fox talk show Hannity & Colmes came to Flint Center for a one-hour special called "Take Back America." The show helped bring news of the lawsuit to a national audience.

Shortly after, Boyer came to Cupertino to research his article and take a look at the community that had sparked such a brouhaha. He was initially struck by Cupertino's amorphous suburban character and lack of affordable housing due to "jaw-dropping real estate prices." Boyer was also struck by the level of tolerance in Cupertino and the graciousness of its residents.

"I found Cupertino wasn't a crazy, godless California place as portrayed by the bloggers," he said, referring to the often vitriolic Web log entries posted online in the weeks following the filing of the lawsuit. While driving through the city, for instance, Boyer noted with surprise Cupertino's large number of churches and other houses of worship. Similarly, Boyer also found himself surprised by the level of religious tolerance at Stevens Creek Elementary.

"The Christian advocates with Mr. Williams asserted a hostility to religion [in Cupertino]," he said--an argument based in part on Williams' allegations that documents referencing God had been banned from his classroom. Boyer found this not to be the case. "They [officials at Stevens Creek] were pretty tolerant on religious grounds," he said.

In the New Yorker piece, "Jesus in the Classroom," Boyer wrote, for example:

"The principal, Patti Vidmar, had fostered an atmosphere of religious tolerance at the school ... Vidmar, who is a Christian, also supported a mothers' prayer group, and otherwise seemed relaxed about the propinquity of religious expression and the classroom."

In his eight weeks of working on the article, Boyer said he was equally impressed by the high quality of the lawyers representing Williams. "One of the ADF lawyers said to me I was going to be surprised to find they were good lawyers, and their eyes weren't rolling crazily in their heads," Boyer said.

Boyer had thought the two sides might reach a resolution before a court hearing. This has not happened. At the end of January, the Cupertino Union School District filed a motion to have the case dismissed. A hearing on the motion was scheduled for March 28 in San Jose's federal court. Williams continues to teach fifth grade at Stevens Creek.

Boyer is uncertain what will happen next.

"Who knows who will win?" he said. "Things are so charged up right now ... [The lawsuit] did not appear from a vacuum. There is a whole strategy represented of pushing the envelope of religion and faith and schools. I am not sure what the effect will be."