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Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987), was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the constitutionality of teaching creationism. The Court considered a Louisiana law requiring that where evolutionary science was taught in public schools, creation science must also be taught. The constitutionality of the law was successfully challenged in District Court, Aguillard v. Treen, 634 F. Supp. 426, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, Aguillard v. Edwards, 765 F.2d 1251. The United States Supreme Court ruled that this law violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the law was specifically intended to advance a particular religion. In its decision, the court opined that "teaching a variety of scientific theories about the origins of humankind to school children might be validly done with the clear secular intent of enhancing the effectiveness of science instruction."
Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974), was a significant United States Supreme Court case dealing with the planned desegregation busing of public school students across district lines among 53 school districts in metropolitan Detroit. It concerned the plans to integrate public schools in the United States following the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision.
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.
Kenneth Raymond Miller is an American cell biologist, molecular biologist, and former biology professor. Miller's primary research focus is the structure and function of cell membranes, especially chloroplast thylakoid membranes. Miller is a co-author of a major introductory college and high school biology textbook published by Prentice Hall since 1990. Miller, who is Roman Catholic, is opposed to creationism, including the intelligent design (ID) movement. He has written three books on the subject: Finding Darwin's God, Only a Theory, and The Human Instinct. Miller has received the Laetare Medal at the University of Notre Dame. In 2017, he received the inaugural St. Albert Award from the Society of Catholic Scientists.
Of Pandas and People: The Central Question of Biological Origins is a controversial 1989 school-level supplementary textbook written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, edited by Charles Thaxton and published by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought and Ethics (FTE). The textbook endorses the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design – the argument that life shows evidence of being designed by an intelligent agent which is not named specifically in the book, although proponents understand that it refers to the Christian God. The overview chapter was written by young Earth creationist Nancy Pearcey. They present various polemical arguments against the scientific theory of evolution. Before publication, early drafts used cognates of "creationist". After the Edwards v. Aguillard Supreme Court ruling that creationism is religion and not science, these were changed to refer to "intelligent design". The second edition published in 1993 included a contribution written by Michael Behe.
McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, 529 F. Supp. 1255, was a 1981 legal case in the US state of Arkansas.
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design (ID), ultimately found by the court to not be science. In October 2004, the Dover Area School District of York County, Pennsylvania, changed its biology teaching curriculum to require that intelligent design be presented as an alternative to evolution theory, and that Of Pandas and People, a textbook advocating intelligent design, was to be used as a reference book. The prominence of this textbook during the trial was such that the case is sometimes referred to as the Dover Panda Trial, a name which recalls the popular name of the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, 80 years earlier. The plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge's decision sparked considerable response from both supporters and critics.
Larry Caldwell, a pro-intelligent design activist and attorney, has been active in bringing litigation in causes supporting the intelligent design movement. Caldwell along with his wife, Jeanne Caldwell a Christian school teacher who "takes the Bible literally" previously operated Quality Science Education for All, and are currently appealing to the Supreme Court of the United States an Establishment Clause of the First Amendment suit against the University of California, Berkeley.
The intelligent design movement has conducted an organized campaign largely in the United States that promotes a pseudoscientific, neo-creationist religious agenda calling for broad social, academic and political changes centering on intelligent design.
Daniel v. Waters, 515 F.2d 485 was a 1975 legal case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down Tennessee's law regarding the teaching of "equal time" of evolution and creationism in public school science classes because it violated the Establishment clause of the US Constitution.
Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District, 37 F.3d 517, was a 1994 court case heard by United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in which a creationist schoolteacher, John E. Peloza claimed that Establishment clause of the United States Constitution along with his own right to free speech was violated by the requirement to teach the "religion" of "evolutionism". The court found against Peloza, finding that evolution was science not religion and that the Capistrano Unified School District school board were right to restrict his teaching of creationism in light of the 1987 Supreme Court decision Edwards v. Aguillard. One of the three appeals judges, Poole, partially dissented from the majority's free speech and due process opinions. It was one in a long line court cases involving the teaching of creationism which have found against creationists. Peloza appealed to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.
Selman v. Cobb County School District, 449 F.3d 1320, was a United States court case in Cobb County, Georgia involving a sticker placed in public school biology textbooks. The sticker was a disclaimer stating that "Evolution is a theory, not a fact, concerning the origin of living things." The plaintiffs were parents of children in Cobb County schools who claimed the sticker violated both the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution and the separation of church and state clause in the Georgia State Constitution because its purpose and effect was to cast doubt on the scientific consensus regarding evolutionary theory in order to promote religious beliefs in the schools.
Willoughby v. Stever, 504 F.2d 271 was an American legal decision in a case brought by evangelist William Willoughby against the National Science Foundation director H. Guyford Stever and the Board of Regents of the University of Colorado for using taxpayer money to fund textbooks developed by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) because they included evolution instruction. Willoughby claimed the pro-evolution curriculum was by extension also promoting secular humanism as the "official religion of the United States," and thus violated the Establishment clause of the US Constitution. Willoughby accused scientists of "intellectual snobbery", and opposed tax revenues going to support education offensive to his religious views. He argued that creationist education should be given the same tax payer funding as evolution education.
Diane Pamela Wood is an American attorney who serves as the director of the American Law Institute, a senior circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
Wright v. Houston Independent School District, 486 F.2d 137 was an American legal case brought by a parent of a student in the Houston Independent School District in Houston, Texas suing on behalf of her daughter and fellow students to prevent the district from teaching evolution as fact and without reference to alternative theories. The plaintiffs claimed evolutionary theory endorsed a secularist religious view, and argued the school's failure to incorporate the teaching of a particular religious alternative to evolutionary theory as derived from the Bible's creation account held that religious view up to ridicule and contempt. To allow evolution while avoiding creationism was unconstitutional, the suit claimed, because it advanced one particular sectarian view over another. The plaintiffs maintained that the school's evolutionary teaching constituted "the establishment of a sectarian, atheistic religion" and was an interference of their own rights to the free exercise of religion as guaranteed by the Establishment clause in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The case is one of a series of legal battles over the teaching of evolution in American public schools, and the first to be initiated by opponents of such teaching.
Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education, 185 F.3d 337 was United States federal court case on the constitutionality of a policy requiring teachers to read aloud a disclaimer whenever they taught about evolution.
Segraves v. California was a 1981 Superior Court of California case concerning the teaching of evolutionary biology in public schools. Kelly Segraves, a parent of three schoolchildren, sued the State of California, arguing that the teaching of evolution in public schools violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judge rejected this claim and found that California's anti-dogmatism policy gave sufficient accommodation to the views of Segraves.
Christina Castillo Comer is the former Director of Science in the curriculum division of the Texas Education Agency (TEA). Comer spent nine years as the Director of Science until she resigned on November 7, 2007. Comer's resignation has sparked controversy about agency politics and the debate to teach evolution in public schools versus creationism or intelligent design.
Bown v. Gwinnett County School District, 112 F.3d 1464, refers to an Eleventh Circuit Court case in which the plaintiff, Brian Bown, a school teacher, challenged as an unconstitutional Establishment Clause violation Georgia's law requiring a "Moment of Quiet Reflection". The Court ruled that the Moment of Quiet Reflection was not unconstitutional. The Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari for an appeal.
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 U.S. states passed laws banning the teaching of evolution.
References
- ↑ Webster v. New Lenox School District, 917F.2d1004 (7th Cir.1990).
- ↑ Scott, Eugenie C. (March 19, 2001). "How to Testify at School Board Meetings". National Center for Science Education . Retrieved November 6, 2009.
- ↑ Molleen Matsumura; Louise Mead (July 31, 2007). "10 Major Court Cases about Evolution and Creationism". National Center for Science Education . Retrieved November 6, 2009.
- 1 2 Than, Ker (September 27, 2005). "Anti-evolution Attacks on the Rise". Live Science . Retrieved August 5, 2008.
