Epperson V. Arkansas - Background

Background

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, normal, 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.

The case in Epperson v. Arkansas involved the teaching of biology in a Little Rock high school forty years later. Based upon the recommendation of the school biology teachers, the administrators adopted a new textbook for the 1965-1966 school year which contained a chapter discussing Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory, and prescribed the subject be taught to the students.

Susan Epperson was a teacher in the Little Rock school system, employed to teach 10th grade biology at the Little Rock Central High School. The adoption of the new textbook and curriculum standard put her in a legal dilemma because it remained a criminal offense to teach the material in her state, and to do as her school district instructed would also put her at risk of dismissal. Epperson was not opposed to the teaching, and with backing from the Arkansas chapter of the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, and the unequivocal support of the Little Rock Ministerial Association, filed suit to test the federal constitutionality of the Arkansas state law. She filed in the Chancery Court in Pulaski County seeking nullification of the law and an injunction against her being dismissed for teaching the evolutionary curriculum. She was joined in the suit by H. H. Blanchard, a parent with children in the school.

The Chancery Court held that the statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which protects citizens from state interference with freedom of speech and thought as contained in the constitution's First Amendment. The lower court decided the law was unconstitutional because it "tends to hinder the quest for knowledge, restrict the freedom to learn, and restrain the freedom to teach."

In 1967, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed the lower court ruling. The opinion read:

Upon the principal issue, that of constitutionality, the court holds that Initiated Measure No. 1 of 1928, Ark.Stat.Ann. § 81627 and § 81628 (Repl.1960), is a valid exercise of the state's power to specify the curriculum in its public schools. The court expresses no opinion on the question whether the Act prohibits any explanation of the theory of evolution or merely prohibits teaching that the theory is true, the answer not being necessary to a decision in the case and the issue not having been raised.

This decision left the ban against teaching evolution in effect.