A number of anti-evolution bills have been introduced in the United States Congress and State legislatures since 2001. Purporting to support academic freedom, supporters have contended that teachers, students, and college professors face intimidation and retaliation when discussing scientific criticisms of evolution, and therefore require protection. Critics of the legislation have pointed out that there are no credible scientific critiques of evolution. An investigation in Florida of the allegations of intimidation and retaliation found no evidence that it had occurred. The vast majority of the bills have been unsuccessful, with the one exception being Louisiana's Louisiana Science Education Act, which was enacted in 2008.
Based largely upon language drafted by the Discovery Institute, from language originally drafted for the Santorum Amendment, the common goal of these bills has been to expose more students to articles and videos that criticize evolution, most of which have been produced by advocates of intelligent design or Biblical creationism.
Santorum Amendment
In 2001 former Republican United States Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania proposed an amendment, to the education funding bill which became known as the No Child Left Behind Act, which promoted the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in U.S. public schools. The language of this amendment was crafted in part by the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, with Phillip E. Johnson, founding adviser of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, and "father" of the intelligent design movement, assisting Santorum in phrasing the amendment. It portrayed evolution as generating "much continuing controversy" and being not widely accepted, using the Discovery Institute's Teach The Controversy method.
On June 14, 2001, the amendment was passed as part of the education funding bill by the Senate on a vote of 91-8. This was hailed as a major victory by proponents of intelligent design; for instance an email newsletter by the Discovery Institute contained the sentence "Undoubtedly this will change the face of the debate over the theories of evolution and intelligent design in America ... It also seems that the Darwinian monopoly on public science education, and perhaps the biological sciences in general, is ending."
Scientists and educators feared that by singling out biological evolution as very controversial, the amendment could create the impression that a substantial scientific controversy about evolution exists, leading to a lessening of academic rigor in science curricula. A coalition of 96 scientific and educational organizations signed a letter urging that the amendment be stricken from the final bill, which it was, but intelligent design supporters on the conference committee preserved it in the bill's legislative history.
Overview
Rather than calling for teaching intelligent design or Bible-based creationism (as previous legislative attempts have), the bills make no mention of these subjects. They instead describe evolution as controversial and attempt to bar school administrators from interfering with teachers who describe purported flaws in the theory. This runs contrary to the overwhelming scientific consensus, which holds that there is no debate about the core principles of evolution: the only credible, and a thoroughly tested, scientific explanation for the development and diversification of all life on Earth.
Tom Hutton, a senior staff lawyer for the National School Boards Association, stated that while state legislators have a legal right to craft laws that affect districts' policies as a general rule, he believes that some decisions are better left to local officials. He further suggested that these proposed bills, if enacted, could face difficult legal challenges. He further stated that despite their language stating that they are not promoting religious views, and wording to promote "scientific" rather than religious critiques, courts are likely to question the motives behind these bills, and their specific focus on evolution, and draw a conclusion as to "what's going on here."
Michael Simpson, a lawyer for the National Education Association stated that courts have generally refused to afford significant free-speech protections to teachers for in-class remarks. He further offered the opinion that the legality of these measures would depend on a number of unknowns, such as how the critical views of evolution-critical views were presented, and possibly the degree of congruence between them and other state policies, such as state science curriculum.