Source: https://www.thefire.org/first-amendment-library/justice/abe-fortas/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 08:46:14+00:00

Document:
Petitioners are identified with a "white supremacist" organization called the National States Rights Party. They held a public assembly or rally near the courthouse steps in the town of Princess Anne, the county seat of Somerset County, Maryland, in the evening of August 6, 1966. The authorities did not attempt to interfere with the rally. Because of the tense atmosphere which developed as the meeting progressed, about 60 state policemen were brought in, including some from a nearby county. They were held in readiness, but for tactical reasons only a few were in evidence at the scene of the rally.
This appeal challenges the constitutionality of the "anti-evolution" statute which the State of Arkansas adopted in 1928 to prohibit the teaching in its public schools and universities of the theory that man evolved from other species of life. The statute was a product of the upsurge of "fundamentalist" religious fervor of the twenties. The Arkansas statute was an adaptation of the famous Tennessee "monkey law" which that State adopted in 1925. The constitutionality of the Tennessee law was upheld by the Tennessee Supreme Court in the celebrated Scopes case in 1927.The Arkansas law makes it unlawful for a teacher in any state-supported school or university "to teach the *99 theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals," or "to adopt or use in any such institution a textbook that teaches" this theory. Violation is a misdemeanor and subjects the violator to dismissal from his position.The present case concerns the teaching of biology in a high school in Little Rock. According to the testimony, until the events here in litigation, the official textbook furnished for the high school biology course did not have a section on the Darwinian Theory. Then, for the academic year 1965-1966, the school administration, on recommendation of the teachers of biology in the school system, adopted and prescribed a textbook which contained a chapter setting forth "the theory about the origin . . . of man from a lower form of animal."*100 Susan Epperson, a young woman who graduated from Arkansas' school system and then obtained her master's degree in zoology at the University of Illinois, was employed by the Little Rock school system in the fall of 1964 to teach 10th grade biology at Central High School. At the start of the next academic year, 1965, she was confronted by the new textbook (which one surmises from the record was not unwelcome to her). She faced at least a literal dilemma because she was supposed to use the new textbook for classroom instruction and presumably to teach the statutorily condemned chapter; but to do so would be a criminal offense and subject her to dismissal.
This case is a sequel to this Court's decision in Russell v. United States, 369 U. S. 749, and companion cases. One of those cases related to the same person who is petitioner here and to the same events.
This is a companion case to No. 176, United States v. Laub, ante, p. 475. Petitioner was tried on a stipulation of facts, under an indictment which alleged that on two occasions she "did unlawfully, knowingly and willfully depart from the United States without bearing a valid passport, for the Republic of Cuba, via Mexico, the Republic of Cuba being a place outside the United States for which a valid passport is required" in violation of § 215 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 190, 8 U. S. C. § 1185 (b). The parties stipulated that "At no time pertinent or material herein did defendant. Helen Maxine Levi Travis, bear a valid *492 United States passport specifically endorsed for travel to the Republic of Cuba . . . ." This stipulation is all that the record in this case reveals as to petitioner's possession of a valid passport. Petitioner was convicted, and the Court of Appeals affirmed. We granted certiorari in light of the important questions raised by petitioner, and the apparent conflict with the decision of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York in the Laub case, supra, which we affirm today.
Appellees were indicted under 18 U. S. C. § 371 for conspiring to violate § 215 (b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, 66 Stat. 190, 8 U. S. C. *477 § 1185 (b). The alleged conspiracy consisted of recruiting and arranging the travel to Cuba of 58 American citizens whose passports, although otherwise valid, were not specifically validated for travel to that country.

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