Epperson V. Arkansas Case Study

The Epperson v. Arkansas court case began on October 16th, 1968 when Susan Epperson, a high school biology teacher, was shocked to find that the state of Arkansas created a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools, because of the Christian beliefs that evolution does not exist. Epperson took Arkansas to the Supreme Court with evidence of violation to the Constitution. The case took a total of around 30 days for the court to decide that this was a violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Justice Abe Fortas ruled that the case was a unanimous decision for Epperson. Arkansas’ law violated the Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion rights of the First Amendment from the Constitution. The State Chancery Court ruled

Susan Epperson achieved a masters degree in zoology at the university of Illinois. Epperson began to work as a teacher in the fall of 1964. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was Earl Warren with Justice Abe Fortas who helped decide who won. Justice Abe Fortas was favored on Epperson’s side. This court case realized that Arkansas’ statute violated the First Amendment in several ways. Arkansas created the statute in 1928 that prohibited teaching, “the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals”, or using textbooks that included information on evolution. Another tial like this one called The Scopes Trial which was a similar case to the Epperson v. Arkansas case about evolution and religion. This breaks the First Amendment because the Arkansas Statute is only with the Christian Religion saying that God created the earth, not evolution. Many other religions believe evolution was not made up, and everything started by

When Arkansas prohibited teaching of evolution in school systems, freedom of speech was being violated by the action of not allowing for teachers to teach on what the people and students want to believe. Today, evolutionary theory has become almost universally accepted among biologists. Freedom of Speech is one of the main points of the Constitution, that all citizens agreed upon, breaking this would create chaos within America. “The Epperson majority explained that "the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them." While such language is undoubtedly partial towards lawsuits against religiously motivated policies that oppose the teaching of evolution, one can also imagine this language being quoted in a brief opposing an atheist plaintiff alleging that teaching scientific critique of evolution, or the teaching of alternatives to evolution such as intelligent design, established theistic religion.” With Freedom of Speech being very significant in modern America, without it, America would fall apart. So if a law is passed that disrupts this Amendment, someone will take it to