page_title: Creation and evolution in public education in the United States
section_title: U.S. legal quotations
hierarchical_section_title: Creation and evolution in public education in the United States / U.S. legal quotations
caption_attribution_description: U.S. District Court Official Government Portrait of Judge John E. Jones III Image was obtained from Dickinson College's website (found at http://www.dickinson.edu/news/features/2005/jones/). After contacting the webmaster, he informed me via e-mail that the image is the official portrait created by the federal government, and he also sent me a fuller, non-cropped image, which is uploaded here. As a work of the federal government, this image is public domain. -- Shadowlink1014
context_page_description: 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. Scopes lost his case, and further states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution.
  In 1968, the US 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 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.
context_section_description: Epperson v. Arkansas (1968):
  ...the First Amendment does not permit the state to require that teaching and learning must be tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any religious sect or dogma...the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them.
  McLean v. Arkansas (1982), the judge wrote that creation scientists:
  ...cannot properly describe the methodology used as scientific, if they start with a conclusion and refuse to change it regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation.
  Edwards v. Aguillard (1987):
  ...Because the primary purpose of the Creationism Act is to advance a particular religious belief, the Act endorses religion in violation of the First Amendment.
  Webster v. New Lenox School District (1990), the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit stated:
  If a teacher in a public school uses religion and teaches religious beliefs or espouses theories clearly based on religious underpinnings, the principles of the separation of church and state are violated as clearly as if a statute ordered the teacher to teach religious theories such as the statutes in Edwards did.
  Peloza v. Capistrano School District (1994), the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote:
  The Supreme Court has held unequivocally that while belief in a Divine Creator of the universe is a religious belief, the scientific theory that higher forms of life evolved from lower ones is not.
  Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005):
  The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board's ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.
caption: Judge John E. Jones III made a landmark ruling in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
exif: {}