In a statement released Tuesday, the university said it stands by the search process and its outcome, and that it settled with Gaskell simply to avoid the headache and expense of a trial. Gaskell…said he is satisfied by the terms of the settlement.

The University of Kentucky has settled a religious discrimination lawsuit with C. Martin Gaskell, a former University of Nebraska astronomer whom Kentucky declined to hire as director of its Lexington-based observatory.

After being snubbed for the directorship in 2007, Gaskell alleged that Kentucky officials had passed on him because of his Christian views — a claim his lawyers say is supported by e-mails sent by members of the search committee, as well as sworn testimony given by the panel’s members and other Kentucky faculty.

The university will pay the spurned astronomer $125,000 — roughly the equivalent of the extra money Gaskell would have made if he had held the directorship for two years, according to Francis Marion, a senior trial lawyer for the National Center for Law & Justice, which worked the astronomer’s case pro bono. A district court judge had denied motions for summary judgment from both parties.

The bulk of Gaskell’s published work addresses the technical aspects of black holes. But he also made a hobby of criticizing the prima facie dismissal of Biblical assertions as irrelevant to scientific theory, while advocating for a view of natural history that rejects neither the Judeo-Christian creation story nor evolution. In a document published on his personal website — which later became fodder for discussion among his would-be employers at Kentucky — Gaskell criticized both creationists and evolutionary scientists for perpetuating bad science.

Read More: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/19/religious_discrimination_lawsuit_ends_well_for_christian_researcher