A lawsuit claimed that teaching evolution promotes atheism. Here’s what a federal court said

Atheists may support the theory of evolution, but that doesn’t mean public school lessons on evolution unlawfully promote atheism, according to a new ruling from a federal district court.

The decision dismissed a lawsuit brought by Christian parents in Indiana, who were fighting to force changes to Indiana’s state standards for science education and to get books referencing evolution out of public school classrooms.

The family’s main argument was that teachers violate religious freedom law when they promote “the atheist religion” by teaching students about evolution.

The court ruled that evolution is not a religious concept and allowed the science education standards to remain in place, per Religion Clause .

Religion and evolution

It’s not new for religion to play a key role in court battles over science lessons in public schools.

Throughout the 20th century, supporters of evolution education used religious freedom law to push back against policies barring teachers from tackling the topic.

These families argued that efforts to block evolution lessons unlawfully prioritized Christianity in the public school setting, as Pew Research Center noted in its overview of the evolution debate.

The recent case out of Indiana stands out because it features a very different religious freedom argument — the claim that teaching evolution violates the Constitution by promoting atheist beliefs.

The parents who filed the lawsuit, Jennifer and Jason Reinoehl, argued that schools that teach evolution essentially choose sides in a faith-based debate, thereby violating the First Amendment’s prohibition on government establishment of religion.

“Because the atheistic Theory of Evolution specifically attacks the Judeo-Christian origin story it has the purpose and effect of advancing the atheist religion,” the lawsuit claimed, per WISH-TV in Indianapolis.

Federal District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker wrote in her ruling that the Reinoehls’ had misinterpreted the establishment clause.

“Despite Plaintiffs’ assertions to the contrary, the purported similarities between evolution and atheism do not render the teaching of evolution in public schools violative of the Establishment Clause, which has never been understood to prohibit government conduct that incidentally ‘coincide(s) or harmonize(s) with the tenets of some or all religions’,” Barker wrote, per WISH-TV.

What has the Supreme Court said about evolution?

The U.S. Supreme Court has previously come out against efforts to restrict lessons on evolution in cases dealing with faith-based science lessons.

In Epperson v. Arkansas in the late 1960s, the justices unanimously said that an Arkansas law banning instruction on evolution in public schools, including state universities, was unconstitutional because its purpose was to promote theological claims.

The Epperson case “put an end to state and local prohibitions on teaching evolution,” Pew reported.

Then, in Edwards v. Aguillard 20 years later, the Supreme Court disrupted another effort to promote religious ideas about human creation by ruling that Louisiana could not require teachers to pair lessons on evolution with lessons on creation science.

Justices in the 7-2 majority decided that legislators’ goal in passing the requirement was to advance a religious viewpoint, per Pew.

Pew’s article noted that these past Supreme Court rulings do not prevent schools from addressing the Bible’s creation stories in other contexts, such as a world literature class.