In the weeks before the lawsuit, parents of students at the school had been complaining to Vidmar about Williams, who described himself as an "Orthodox Christian," handing out religiously-themed pamphlets in his classes.

The lawsuit was handled for Williams by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an Arizona-based legal group whose mission was to defend "the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding and litigation" in response to "challenges to people of faith to live and proclaim the Gospel."

As Mike Johnson of the ADF told the Baptist Press News (12/20/04), "The school ground is the battleground now in the culture war when it comes to religious expression.

This press release was especially publicized by various Fox News Network shows,[2] and resulted in over a thousand hostile messages being sent to the school, some containing threats.

Under the settlement, filed in federal court in San Jose, no money would exchange hands, and no school policies would be altered.