Butler Act
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The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the Biblical account
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
of man’s
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
origin. It was enacted as Tennessee Code Annotated Title 49 (Education) Section 1922. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of man
Human evolution
Human evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...
from what it referred to as lower orders of animal
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
s in place of the Biblical account.
Provisions of the law
The law, "AN ACT prohibiting the teaching of the Evolution Theory in all the Universities, and all other public schools of Tennessee, which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, and to provide penalties for the violations thereof" (Tenn. HB 185, 1925) specifically provided:- That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the UniversitiesUniversityA university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
, NormalsNormal schoolA normal school is a school created to train high school graduates to be teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name...
and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the BibleBibleThe Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
It additionally outlined that an offending teacher would be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined between $100 and $500 for each offense.
By the terms of the statute, it could be argued, it was not illegal to teach that ape
Ape
Apes are Old World anthropoid mammals, more specifically a clade of tailless catarrhine primates, belonging to the biological superfamily Hominoidea. The apes are native to Africa and South-east Asia, although in relatively recent times humans have spread all over the world...
s descended from protozoa
Protozoa
Protozoa are a diverse group of single-cells eukaryotic organisms, many of which are motile. Throughout history, protozoa have been defined as single-cell protists with animal-like behavior, e.g., movement...
, to teach the mechanisms of variation
Genetic variation
Genetic variation, variation in alleles of genes, occurs both within and among populations. Genetic variation is important because it provides the “raw material” for natural selection. Genetic variation is brought about by mutation, a change in a chemical structure of a gene. Polyploidy is an...
and natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
, or to teach the prevailing scientific theories of geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
or the age of the Earth
Age of the Earth
The age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years This age is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples...
. It did not even require that the Genesis story be taught. It prohibited only the teaching that man evolved, or any other theory denying that man was created by God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
as recorded in Genesis. However the author of the law, a Tennessee farmer named John Washington Butler
John Washington Butler
John Washington Butler was an American farmer and a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives. He is most noted for introducing the Butler Act, which prohibited teaching of evolution in public schools...
, specifically intended that it would prohibit the teaching of evolution. He later was reported to have said, "No, I didn't know anything about evolution when I introduced it. I'd read in the papers that boys and girls were coming home from school and telling their fathers and mothers that the Bible was all nonsense." After reading copies of William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan
William Jennings Bryan was an American politician in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. He was a dominant force in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, standing three times as its candidate for President of the United States...
's lecture "Is the Bible True?" as well as Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's The Origin of Species
The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the...
and The Descent of Man
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book on evolutionary theory by English naturalist Charles Darwin, first published in 1871. It was Darwin's second great book on evolutionary theory, following his 1859 work, On The Origin of Species. In The Descent of Man, Darwin applies...
, Butler decided evolution was dangerous.
Challenges
The law was challenged by the ACLUAmerican Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union is a U.S. non-profit organization whose stated mission is "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States." It works through litigation, legislation, and...
in the famed Scopes Trial
Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial—formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made it unlawful to...
, in which John Scopes
John T. Scopes
John Thomas Scopes , was a biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925 for violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools...
, a high school sports coach who occasionally acted as a substitute teacher, agreed to be arrested on a charge of having taught evolution, and was nominally served a warrant on May 5, 1925. Scopes was indicted on May 25 and ultimately convicted; on appeal the Tennessee Supreme Court
Tennessee Supreme Court
The Tennessee Supreme Court is the state supreme court of the state of Tennessee. Cornelia Clark is the current Chief Justice.Unlike other states, in which the state attorney general is directly elected or appointed by the governor or state legislature, the Tennessee Supreme Court appoints the...
found the law to be constitutional under the Tennessee State Constitution
Tennessee State Constitution
The Constitution of the State of Tennessee defines the form, structure, activities, character, and fundamental rules of the U.S. State of Tennessee....
, because:
We are not able to see how the prohibition of teaching the theory that man has descended from a lower order of animals gives preference to any religious establishment or mode of worship. So far as we know, there is no religious establishment or organized body that has in its creed or confession of faith any article denying or affirming such a theory. — Scopes v. State 289 S.W. 363, 367 (Tenn. 1927)
Despite this decision, the Tennessee Supreme Court reversed the conviction on a technicality (that the jury should have fixed the amount of the fine), and the case was not retried. During the trial, Butler told reporters: "I never had any idea my bill would make a fuss. I just thought it would become a law, and that everybody would abide by it and that we wouldn't hear any more of evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
in Tennessee."
The law remained on the books until 1967, when teacher Gary L. Scott of Jacksboro TN
Jacksboro, Tennessee
Jacksboro is a town in Campbell County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 1,887 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Campbell County.-Geography:Jacksboro is located at...
, dismissed for violation of the act, sued for reinstatement, citing his First Amendment right to free speech
Freedom of speech in the United States
Freedom of speech in the United States is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and by many state constitutions and state and federal laws, with the exception of obscenity, defamation, incitement to riot, and fighting words, as well as harassment, privileged...
. Although his termination was rescinded, Scott continued his fight with a class action lawsuit in the Nashville Federal District Court, seeking a permanent injunction against enforcement of that law. Within three days of his filing suit, a bill for repeal of the Butler Act had passed both houses of the Tennessee legislature, signed into law May 18 by Governor Buford Ellington.
See also
- Scopes TrialScopes TrialThe Scopes Trial—formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes and informally known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—was a landmark American legal case in 1925 in which high school science teacher, John Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act which made it unlawful to...
- Monkey TownMonkey TownMonkey Town: The Summer of the Scopes Trial is a 2006 novel written by American author Ronald Kidd. The story is set in summer 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee and is based on the Scopes Trial.-Plot summary:...
- Creation and evolution in public educationCreation and evolution in public educationThe status of creation and evolution in public education has been the subject of substantial debate in legal, political, and religious circles...