# Epperson v. Arkansas

> Supreme Court of the United States · November 12, 1968 · 393 U.S. 97

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423841

## Case

- **Full name:** EPPERSON Et Al. v. ARKANSAS
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** November 12, 1968
- **Citations:** 393 U.S. 97; 89 S. Ct. 266; 21 L. Ed. 2d 228; 1968 U.S. LEXIS 328
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Stewart
- **Judges:** Fortas, Black, Harlan, Stewart
- **Cited by:** 967 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423841

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- finding ripe a claim by high school biology teacher seeking injunction and declaratory judgment that state statute prohibiting teaching of evolution and subjecting violators to criminal prosecution and termination from teaching positions violated the First Amendment, even thou…
- holding that banning the teaching of evolution in public schools violates the First Amendment since "teaching and learning" must not "be tailored to the principles or prohibitions of any religious sect or dogma"
- stating that courts "cannot intervene in the resolution of conflicts which arise in the daily operation of school systems and which do not directly and sharply implicate basic constitutional values"
- noting that "[t]he States are most assuredly free to choose their own curricu-lums for their own schools,” but rejecting the notion that a State could constitutionally punish a teacher for mentioning the existence of a prohibited subject (internal quotation marks omitted)

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Stewart,
concurring in the result.
The States are most assuredly free “to choose their own curriculums for their own schools.” A State is en *116 tirely free, for example, to decide that the only foreign language to be taught in its public school system shall be Spanish. But would a State be constitutionally free to ■punish a teacher for letting his students know that other languages are also spoken in the world? I think not.
It is one thing for a State to determine that “the subject of higher mathematics, or astronomy, or biology” shall or shall not be included in its public school curriculum. It is quite another thing for a State to make it a criminal offense for a public school teacher so much as to mention the very existence of an entire system of respected human thought. That kind of criminal law, I think, would clearly impinge upon the guarantees of free communication contained in the First Amendment, and made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth.
The Arkansas Supreme Court has said that the statute before us may or may not be just such a law. The result, as Me. Justice Black points out, is that “a teacher cannot know whether he is forbidden to mention Darwin’s theory at all.” Since I believe that no State could constitutionally forbid a teacher “to mention Darwin’s theory at all,” and since Arkansas may, or may not, have done just that, I conclude that the statute before us is so vague as to be invalid under the Fourteenth Amendment. See Cramp v. Board of Pub. Instruction, 368 U. S. 278 .

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9423841. Public record. Not legal advice.