Decision of the court

Decision of the court.

At the time the current law of the Arkansas court forbade the mentioning or teaching of any sort of Darwinian theory in the Arkansas school system. It only accepted the teaching of divine creation. Arkansas definitely sought to prevent its teachers from discussing the theory of evolution because it is contrary to the belief of some that the Book of Genesis must be the exclusive source of doctrine as to the origin of man. The law that was currently being held was a form of the state of Tennessee’s “monkey law”. Tennessee’s “monkey law” made it unlawful to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals. The decision of the court ended up ruling in favor of Susan Epperson and the reversed the Arkansas law on teaching evolution in the classroom. The court found the law a violation of the fourteenth amendment in which protects against the violation of a person’s basic rights. In addition, the court found the Arkansas law in violation of the first amendment. The decision was a big step toward the evolution teaching movement in schools.