If you’ve seen Spencer Tracy and Fredric March square off in the 1960 film Inherit the Wind, you think you know the story. The crusading defense attorney Henry Drummond battles the Bible-thumping prosecutor Matthew Harrison Brady in a dramatic courtroom showdown over evolution and religious freedom. It’s compelling theater—and almost entirely fiction. The truth is far more extraordinary than Hollywood dared imagine.
The real story behind that Hollywood drama unfolded exactly one century ago, when the gavel fell in Dayton, Tennessee, on July 21, 1925, convicting biology teacher John Scopes of teaching evolution. While Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s 1955 play captured the cultural tensions of the era, they freely admitted it was “not meant to be a historical account.” The actual Scopes trial was far more complex and legally significant than any Hollywood screenplay—and its constitutional questions continue to shape American education policy today.
The Real Story
The trial that would captivate the nation began as a publicity stunt. In 1925, Tennessee had passed the Butler Act, making it illegal to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. George Rappleyea, a local businessman, saw an opportunity to put the small town of Dayton on the map. He convinced 24-year-old John Scopes, a substitute biology teacher, to admit to teaching evolution from the state-required textbook. Scopes later confessed he wasn’t even sure he’d actually covered evolution in class, but he was willing to serve as the test case.
The case attracted two of the most formidable figures in American history. William Jennings Bryan was no mere fundamentalist caricature. By 1925, the “Great Commoner” had dominated American politics for three decades, securing the Democratic presidential nomination three times and serving as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson. His “Cross of Gold” speech at the 1896 Democratic Convention remains one of the most electrifying moments in American political oratory. Bryan championed progressive causes—women’s suffrage, direct election of senators, federal income tax, and workers’ rights—while maintaining unwavering faith in Biblical literalism.
Clarence Darrow had built his reputation as America’s premier criminal defense attorney. He’d saved Leopold and Loeb from the electric chair, defended union leaders during labor strikes, and built a career challenging authority and conventional wisdom. Where Bryan saw divine truth in Scripture, Darrow saw superstition and social control. Bryan volunteered to assist the prosecution, despite not having tried a case in 36 years. Darrow, initially unwelcome by the ACLU who feared his “militant agnosticism,” inserted himself into the case anyway.
The trial became the first American legal proceeding broadcast on national radio, with over 200 newspaper reporters covering the proceedings. But the trial’s most famous moment came when Darrow took the unprecedented step of calling Bryan to the witness stand as an expert on the Bible. For two hours on the courthouse lawn—the proceedings had moved outside due to stifling heat and overcrowding—America’s greatest orator faced off against its most skilled cross-examiner.
Darrow methodically questioned Bryan about Biblical inconsistencies: Was Eve actually created from Adam’s rib? Where did Cain find his wife? How could the Earth be only a few thousand years old when geological evidence suggested millions? Bryan, increasingly flustered, finally snapped that Darrow’s purpose was “to cast ridicule on everybody who believes in the Bible,” to which Darrow retorted: “We have the purpose of preventing bigots and ignoramuses from controlling the education of the United States.”
While Bryan “won” the case (Scopes was convicted and fined $100), Darrow achieved something more valuable: he demonstrated the practical difficulties of governing a modern, diverse society according to one religious tradition’s literal interpretation of ancient texts. On appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the 1925 law but acquitted Scopes on the technicality that he had been fined excessively. Bryan died just five days after the trial’s conclusion.
The Modern Battle
As we mark the 100th anniversary of that July day, remarkably similar arguments dominate state legislatures and school board meetings across America. The roles have reversed, but the constitutional questions persist: How much religious influence belongs in America’s public schools?
In May 2025, Texas passed Senate Bill 10, legislation requiring all public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. The bill’s journey through the legislature reflected the political divisions over religion in education: it passed the Senate in March on a 20–11 party-line vote, then moved to the House where it sparked intense debate before passing in late May. A House amendment requiring the state, rather than individual school districts, to defend any legal challenges forced the bill back to the Senate for final approval. Governor Abbott, who has expressed strong support for the measure, is expected to sign it into law, with implementation set for the 2025–26 school year.
The Texas legislation reflects a broader national movement, with Louisiana becoming the first state to require Ten Commandments displays in every classroom (though federal courts quickly blocked enforcement) and Oklahoma mandating that schools incorporate the Bible into curricula for grades five through twelve. As the nation’s second-largest state with more than 5 million students in public schools, Texas’s action carries particular significance for the national debate.
Proponents across these states frame their efforts in constitutional and historical terms. Texas State Senator Phil King, lead author of the Ten Commandments bill, declared that “what was taken from our students can now be rightfully restored,” arguing that these displays reflect “a historical document foundational to our nation’s history and character.” Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters required Bible instruction because students need to understand texts that had “substantial influence on our nation’s founders and the foundational principles of our Constitution.”
These arguments echo Bryan’s 1925 position that religious texts deserve special consideration in public education due to their historical importance in American culture. But what distinguishes today’s battles from the Scopes era is the Supreme Court’s recent recalibration of church-state separation. The 2022 Kennedy v. Bremerton School District decision, involving a Washington state football coach who prayed at midfield after games, marked a significant shift toward allowing more religious expression in public educational settings.
Writing for the six-justice majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch concluded that “a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance” and that “the Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination.” The decision abandoned longstanding precedents, including the “Lemon test,” which required strict government neutrality between religion and secular interests.
The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” For decades, courts interpreted this to require government neutrality toward religion. The Kennedy decision suggests the current Court may be more willing to accommodate religious expression in public settings. Courts will determine how this precedent applies to mandated religious displays versus individual expression, as the legal framework governing religion in public education continues to evolve through ongoing litigation.
Studies of these constitutional questions show that the implementation difficulties these mandates create for school administrators often get overlooked in legal arguments. Texas’s legislation notably lacks an enforcement mechanism, leaving unclear what consequences schools or teachers might face for non-compliance. In Oklahoma, legal experts argue that Walters lacks authority to mandate specific curriculum, as state law gives local school districts exclusive power to determine instruction and materials.
These ambiguities create challenges for educators navigating competing legal requirements. Several of Oklahoma’s largest school districts have indicated they will not comply with the Bible mandate, while Walters has warned that educators “will comply, and I will use every means to make sure of it.” The guidance doesn’t specify penalties for non-compliance. In Texas, legislators anticipated legal challenges when they amended SB 10 to require the state, rather than school districts, to defend any constitutional challenges—shifting the financial burden away from local educators. Legal observers have noted that school districts often find themselves caught between state mandates and federal constitutional protections, creating legal uncertainty that courts will need to resolve through future litigation.
The contemporary education battles raise questions that extend beyond theological concerns, touching issues of local control, parental rights, and democratic governance that would have been familiar to both Bryan and Darrow. Critics note the apparent inconsistency between mandating religious displays while simultaneously championing parents’ rights to decide “what books and topics” are permissible in schools. As one Oklahoma plaintiff, a Christian parent and founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition, explained: “As parents, my husband and I have sole responsibility to decide how and when our children learn about the Bible and religious teachings. Different Christian denominations have different theological beliefs and practices.”
This raises a crucial question that courts continue to grapple with: do these policies impose “religion” generally, or do they favor specific interpretations of specific religious traditions? Constitutional scholars continue to debate whether current approaches adequately protect religious diversity in public education.
The legal challenges to contemporary religious mandates follow familiar patterns. Louisiana’s federal court ruling that Ten Commandments requirements were “unconstitutional on its face” echoes the eventual fate of anti-evolution laws. Tennessee repealed the Butler Act in 1967, and in 1968, the Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas that such anti-evolution laws violated the Establishment Clause because their primary purpose was religious. However, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority makes constitutional outcomes less predictable than they would have been even a decade ago.
Unlike the fictional heroes of Inherit the Wind, the real Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan represented nuanced positions that defy simple categorization. Bryan’s progressive political record complicates any portrayal of him as merely a backward fundamentalist. Darrow’s fierce advocacy for individual rights extended beyond religious freedom to encompass broader civil liberties. Their constitutional confrontation in 1925 established legal principles that continue to govern church-state relations in American education, though the specific applications of those principles remain subject to ongoing judicial interpretation and political debate.
Legal scholarship examining similar constitutional questions as they evolve through the courts shows that courts have generally followed the approach developed in the post-Scopes era: allowing voluntary religious expression while preventing government endorsement of specific religious viewpoints. Legal scholars continue to debate whether complete secularization or religious accommodation offers a workable framework for public education in a diverse democracy.
Historian Edward J. Larson, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his definitive account of the trial, observed that “like so many archetypal American events, the trial itself began as a publicity stunt.” Yet it came to symbolize broader tensions about pluralism, tradition, and the role of public institutions in a diverse democracy. As we mark this centennial, American public education continues to navigate the balance between honoring religious heritage and maintaining constitutional principles that protect students of all faiths, and those of no faith at all.
The current wave of religious mandates will ultimately be resolved through the courts, as similar constitutional challenges have determined the fate of comparable laws in the past. But the underlying question remains: In a nation built on both religious freedom and religious diversity, how do we ensure that public schools serve all students equally while respecting the religious convictions that shape American culture? That question, first dramatized in a small Tennessee town one hundred years ago, continues to define the ongoing struggle over American public education. Will future generations find answers that eluded both the fictional characters of Hollywood and the very real constitutional giants who faced off in Dayton?
This analysis is based on study of constitutional law and does not constitute legal advice. The legal landscape surrounding religion in public education continues to evolve through ongoing litigation and Supreme Court decisions.
