Edwards v. Aguillard

Edwards v. Aguillard
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 10, 1986 Decided June 19, 1987
Full case name	Edwin W. Edwards, Governor of Louisiana, et al., Appellants v. Don Aguillard et al.
Citations	482 U.S. 578 (more) 107 S. Ct. 2573; 96 L. Ed. 2d 510; 1987 U.S. LEXIS 2729; 55 U.S.L.W. 4860
Argument	Oral argument
Decision	Opinion
Case history
Prior	765 F.2d 1251 (5th Cir. 1985)
Holding
Teaching creationism in public schools is unconstitutional because it attempts to advance a particular religion.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices William J. Brennan Jr. · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun Lewis F. Powell Jr. · John P. Stevens Sandra Day O'Connor · Antonin Scalia
Case opinions
Majority	Brennan, joined by Marshall, Blackmun, Powell, Stevens; O'Connor (all but part II)
Concurrence	Powell, joined by O'Connor
Concurrence	White (in judgment)
Dissent	Scalia, joined by Rehnquist
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I

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 (ED La.1985), and the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed, Aguillard v. Edwards, 765 F.2d 1251 (CA5 1985). 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."^[1]

In support of Aguillard, 72 Nobel Prize-winning scientists,^[2] 17 state academies of science, and seven other scientific organizations filed amicus briefs that described creation science as being composed of religious tenets.