Epperson v. Arkansas

Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that invalidated an Arkansas statute prohibiting the teaching of human evolution in the public schools. The Court held that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a state from requiring, in the words of the majority opinion, "that teaching and learning must be tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any religious sect or dogma." The Supreme Court declared the Arkansas statute unconstitutional because it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. After this decision, some jurisdictions passed laws that required the teaching of creation science alongside evolution when evolution was taught. These were also ruled unconstitutional by the Court in the 1987 case Edwards v. Aguillard. This case focused on the constitutionality of a 1928 Arkansas statute prohibiting the teaching of human evolutionary theory in its public schools and universities. The statute was enacted during a period of Christian Fundamentalist religious fervor in the 1920s. The Arkansas statute was modeled after Tennessee's 1925 "Butler Act", the subject of the well known Scopes Trial in 1925. The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Tennessee law in 1927, allowing the state to continue to prohibit the teaching of evolution. The Arkansas law was passed through the initiative process, the first anti-evolution law in the United States passed through general election, and teachers who violated it were made subject to fine and dismissal by the state. The law made it unlawful for any teacher or other instructor in any university, college, public school or other institution of the state which is supported in whole or in part from public funds derived by state or local taxation to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals, and also that it be unlawful for any teacher, textbook commission, or other authority exercising the power to select textbooks for above-mentioned institutions to adopt or use in any such institution a textbook that teaches the doctrine or theory that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animal.