In American schools, the Genesis creation narrative was generally taught as the origin of the universe and of life until Darwin's scientific theories became widely accepted. While there was some immediate backlash, organized opposition did not get underway until the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy broke out following World War I; several states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution while others debated them but did not pass them. The Scopes trial was the result of a challenge to the law in Tennessee. John T. Scopes lost his case, and further U.S. states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Epperson v. Arkansas, another challenge to these laws, and the court ruled that allowing the teaching of creation, while disallowing the teaching of evolution, advanced a religion, and therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Creationists then starting lobbying to have laws passed that required teachers to Teach the Controversy, but this was also struck down by the Supreme Court in 1987 in Edwards v. Aguillard. Creationists then moved to frame the issue as one of intelligent design but this too was ruled against in a District Court in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in 2005. Since December 2005, Google Trends found the popularity of search queries for intelligent design in Google Search has declined sufficiently from its height in November 2004.
As of 2024, all fifty U.S. states and the District of Columbia includes the teaching of evolution in their public school science standards, while none teach intelligent design and creationism, which are instead discussed in non-science classes, such as philosophy, comparative religion, or current affairs.
History
Early law
Until the late 19th century, the Genesis creation narrative was taught in nearly all schools in the United States, often from the position that the literal interpretation of the Bible is inerrant. With the widespread acceptance of the scientific theory of biological evolution in the 1860s after being first introduced in 1859, and developments in other fields such as geology and astronomy, public schools began to teach science that was reconciled with Christianity by most people, but human evolution, but not animal evolution, was considered by a number of early fundamentalists to be directly at odds with the Bible.
In the aftermath of World War I, the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy brought a surge of opposition to the idea of biological human evolution, and following the campaigning of William Jennings Bryan several states introduced legislation prohibiting the teaching of biological human evolution in public schools. Such legislation was voted on and defeated in 1922 in Kentucky and South Carolina and voted on and defeated in 1923 in Oklahoma and Florida. On March 13, 1925, the Tennessee House of Representatives passed the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in public schools, with a vote of 71–5. On March 16, 1925, the Tennessee Senate approved the Butler Act with a vote of 24–6. On March 21, 1925, Governor Austin Peay signed the Butler Act into law, and it took effect immediately on the same day. Violating the Butler Act was a misdemeanor, punishable by a fine of $100 to $500.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) offered to defend anyone who wanted to bring a test case against one of these laws. John T. Scopes accepted, and he started teaching his class human evolution, in defiance of the Tennessee law. On May 5, 1925, Scopes was arrested for violating the Butler Act. On July 10, 1925, the trial, known as the Scopes Monkey Trial, began and on July 21, 1925, Scopes was found guilty by the jury and convicted by the judge. He was fined $100. The resulting trial was widely publicized by H. L. Mencken and others. Nobody else was ever arrested or convicted and the Butler Act remained unenforced for its remaining duration. On November 24, 1925, the Texas State Board of Education adopted a policy that mandated that textbooks used in public schools should not teach or mention the theory of human evolution, but the enforcement of this policy was not entirely uniform. Some textbooks used in Texas schools still included references to human evolution, though these were often minimized or presented in a way that downplayed the theory.
On March 12, 1926, the Mississippi House of Representatives passed an anti-human evolution law with a vote of 78–16. On March 16, 1926, the Mississippi Senate approved the law with a vote of 27–12. On March 18, 1926, Governor Dennis Murphree signed the law, which took effect immediately. The penalty for violating this law was a fine of up to $500. Nobody was ever arrested under the law and it remained unenforced for its remaining duration. On January 15, 1927, in the case of Scopes v. State, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed, by a vote of 3–1, the conviction of John T. Scopes on a technicality, ruling that the judge, rather than the jury, had imposed the $100 fine, which violated Tennessee law. However, the court upheld, by a vote of 4–0, the constitutionality of the Butler Act itself. On February 10, 1928, the Arkansas House of Representatives passed a law banning the teaching of human evolution in public schools with a vote of 75–18. The Court held:
We are not able to see how the prohibition of teaching the theory that man has descended from a lower order of animals gives preference to any religious establishment or mode of worship. So far as we know there is no religious establishment or organized body that has its creed or confession of faith any article denying or affirming such a theory. — John Thomas Scopes v. The State 154 Tenn. 105, 289 S.W. 363 (1927)
The interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment up to that time was that Congress could not establish a particular religion as the State religion. Consequently, the Court held that the ban on the teaching of evolution did not violate the Establishment Clause, because it did not establish one religion as the "State religion." As a result of the holding, the teaching of evolution remained illegal in Tennessee, and continued campaigning succeeded in removing evolution from school textbooks throughout the United States. Whether ID Is Science, p. 19.
On February 14, 1928, the Arkansas Senate passed the same anti-human evolution law with a vote of 23–7. On March 16, 1928, Governor John Ellis Martineau signed the law into effect immediately. The penalty for violating the law was a fine of $500. Nobody was ever arrested under the law and it remained unenforced for its remaining duration. In 1947, the Texas State Board of Education reversed its policy of discouraging or minimizing the teaching of human evolution in public school textbooks.Ravitch, Diane. *The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education*. Basic Books, 2010. . This book provides a detailed examination of educational policy changes, including those related to evolution education.
Modern legal cases
On April 1, 1967, the Tennessee House of Representatives voted to repeal the Butler Act by a vote of 69–20. On May 17, 1967, the Tennessee Senate passed the repeal by a vote of 19–13. On May 18, 1967, Governor Buford Ellington signed the repeal into law and it took effect on the same day. On January 24, 1969, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the anti-human evolution law by a vote of 65–25. On January 30, 1969, the Arkansas Senate passed the repeal by a vote of 22–11. On February 3, 1969, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller signed the repeal into law and it took effect the same day.
In 1967, the Tennessee public schools were threatened with another lawsuit over the Butler Act's constitutionality, and, fearing public reprisal, Tennessee's legislature repealed the Butler Act. In the following year, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) that Arkansas's law prohibiting the teaching of evolution was in violation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the state from advancing any religion, and determined that the Arkansas law which allowed the teaching of creation while disallowing the teaching of evolution advanced a religion, and was therefore in violation of the Establishment Clause. This holding reflected a broader understanding of the Establishment Clause: instead of just prohibiting laws that established a state religion, the clause was interpreted to prohibit laws that furthered any particular religion over others. Opponents, pointing to the previous decision, argued that this amounted to judicial activism.
In reaction to the Epperson case, creationists in Louisiana passed a law requiring that public schools should give "equal time" to "alternative theories" of origin. The Supreme Court ruled in 1987 in Edwards v. Aguillard that the Louisiana statute, which required creation to be taught alongside evolution every time evolution was taught, was unconstitutional.
The Court laid out its rule in Edwards as follows:
The Establishment Clause forbids the enactment of any law 'respecting an establishment of religion.' The Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether legislation comports with the Establishment Clause. First, the legislature must have adopted the law with a secular purpose. Second, the statute's principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion. Third, the statute must not result in an excessive entanglement of government with religion. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612–613, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 2111, 29 L.Ed.2d 745 (1971). State action violates the Establishment Clause if it fails to satisfy any of these prongs. — Edwards v. Aguillard
The Court held that the law was not adopted with a secular purpose, because its purported purpose of "protecting academic freedom" was not furthered by limiting the freedom of teachers to teach what they thought appropriate; ruled that the act was discriminatory because it provided certain resources and guarantees to "creation scientists" which were not provided to those who taught evolution; and ruled that the law was intended to advance a particular religion because several state senators that had supported the bill stated that their support for the bill stemmed from their religious beliefs.
While the Court held that creationism is an inherently religious belief, it did not hold that every mention of creationism in a public school is unconstitutional:
We do not imply that a legislature could never require that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories be taught. Indeed, the Court acknowledged in Stone that its decision forbidding the posting of the Ten Commandments did not mean that no use could ever be made of the Ten Commandments, or that the Ten Commandments played an exclusively religious role in the history of Western Civilization. 449 U.S., at 42, 101 S.Ct., at 194. In a similar way, teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to schoolchildren might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction. But because the primary purpose of the Creationism Act is to endorse a particular religious doctrine, the Act furthers religion in violation of the Establishment Clause. — Edwards v. Aguillard
Intelligent design and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District The ruling was one in a series of developments addressing issues related to the American creationist movement and the separation of church and state. The scope of the ruling affected state schools and did not include independent schools, home schools, Sunday schools and Christian schools, all of whom remained free to teach creationism.