Perspectives: School’s out, but century-old rulings merit study

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With most schools are in hiatus during the summer, it’s an opportune time to look back at two landmark education cases, both decided a century ago, that still reverberates in K-12 classes today.

One of the cases happened to occur a century ago this month, while the other was decided during the 1924-25 term of the Supreme Court.

In recognition of those watershed rulings, here’s a glance at the pair of centenary cases, and a three other ones addressed last month by the Supreme Court, including one from Minnesota.

Monkey business 

The most celebrated matter of the centenary pair — and one of the most well-known cases in the annals of American law — was the famed Scopes “Monkey Trial.” Heard in a rural Tennessee trial court 100 years ago this month, beginning July 10, 1925, and concluding a century ago today, July 21, to be precise. It was a criminal prosecution of 24-year-old Dayton, Tennessee, school teacher John Scopes, who challenged a state law known as the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of the evolution theory of Charles Darwin.

The case, orchestrated by the business community to boost the local economy, became a cause célèbres as the combatting attorneys were a pair of the country’s best known lawyers: three-time unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, known as the “Great Commoner” aiding the local prosecution unit pitted against Clarence Darrow, the renowned criminal attorney for the defense team.

The event attracted thousands to the small Tennessee farm town in the run-up to the litigation, including the infant mass media of the day, radio, which broadcast the climactic showdown when Darrow’s cross-examination of Bryan, as a theological “expert,” demolished his adverse advocate.

After this historic encounter, Scopes was rapidly convicted by a rural jury, and the judge imposed a $100 fine, which later was overturned on a state court appeal on a procedural technicality. But the dramatic character of the case continued. It was developed into a Broadway play, then converted into a highly regarded movie in 1960, “Inherit the Wind,” starring seven-time Academy Award nominee Spencer Tracy in the Darrow role; Frederic March as the Bryan character; Gene Kelly as a cynical reporter modeled after the iconic H.L. Mencken, for which Kelly earned an Academy Award nomination; Dick York, later of TV’s “Bewitched” fame, played Scopes; and Harry Morgan, later of TV’s “Dragnet” and “MASH” was the presiding judge.

The movie was remade several times for television with big name stars like Kirk Douglas and later Jack Lemmon in the Darrow roles, among other luminaries.

Scopes was ultimately indicted in the eyes of the law and lore. He never paid the fine and the case has reversed on appeal by the Tennessee Supreme Court two years later in Scopes v. State, 289 S.E. 363, 157 Tenn. 105 (1927) on the legal technicality that the jury, not the judge, should have imposed any fine. However, the court did uphold the validity of the anti-Darwinism law, as a permissible exercise of legislative discretion and not violative of any constitutional provision because it only forbade a particular topic of teaching but did not affirmatively “require” teaching any specific doctrine to “benefit” any one religious tenet or sect over others.

Four decades later, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its liberal heyday, saw the matter differently. In Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 57 (1968), it unanimously struck down an Arkansas version of the Tennessee Butler Act prohibiting teaching of evolution in public schools, a position reinforced 18 years later by a more conservative tribunal in Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U. S. 578 (1987), invalidating a Louisiana law that required. public schools there to provide instruction on “creation-science” to balance any teaching of evolution, although two justices dissented.

Additional Appeal

The additional centenary case, also adjudicated in 1925, was Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925). Decided by a heavily conservative tribunal, it unanimously struck down an Oregon state law requiring all children to attend public elementary and junior-senior high schools. The court deemed the mandate a violation of “parental prerogative,” reasoning that the parental right to select parochial or private schooling was “protected” within Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment.

The ruling stemmed from the court’s decision two years earlier in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), in which the justices ruled that a state law prohibiting teaching of foreign languages to students before eighth grade, a measure addressing World War I era anti-Germany feelings, to be a Due Process violation, too.

In both cases, prior to “incorporation” of the First Amendment to apply to the state, it was the protection of “property” in the Due Process clause that was decisive.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

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“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

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“Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.”
Educator John Dewey (1859-1952)

Term trio

Fast-forward to the recently concluded 2024-25 term of the Supreme Court, which had three school cases on its docket.

One of them turned out to be a nonstarter, as the justices were evenly-split 4-4 in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, No.24–394 (June May 22, 2025), in which the court considered the provocative issue of the propriety of public funding for a religious charter school in Oklahoma, which two lower court rulings prohibited under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court, following the recusal of justice Amy Coney Barrett due to her affiliation with the faculty adviser for the legal clinic at Notre Dame Law School, where she formerly taught, which provided legal advice to the school. That led to the 4–4 split, with Chief Justice John Roberts apparently joining the three liberal members of the court, resulting in an affirmance of the lower court ruling, although the issue is likely to rebound to the court at some future date and may elicit a more favorable response in favor of the religious funding of charter schools in the event that Justice Barrett participates in the proceeding.

But that did not break up the high court’s consistent string of rulings in favor First Amendment religious claimants, as Mahmood v. Taylor, 2025 WL 1773627 (June 27, 2025) in which the justices near the end of this term addressed the issue whether schools must comply with requests of parent on religious grounds to remove their children from classrooms when discussing books with GLBTQ+ characters or similar themes. The 6-3 decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito, drew its essence from the century-old Meyer case elevating the right of parental input in school-related decisions. But the ruling drew criticism from the three-member liberal wing and others for opening the door for creating a precedent permitting parents to have undue impact on school curricula for ostensibly religious or other constitutional or statutorily protected reasons by opting out of classes that could undermine public school arrangements.

Minnesota matter

The Supreme Court also addressed a school case from Minnesota this term without any religious implications. In A.J.T. v. Osseo Schools, Ind. Sch. District 279, 145 S. Ct. 1647 (June 12, 2025), the court unanimously ruled in favor of a Minnesota parent couple and their epileptic daughter under the Individuals With Disabilities Act (IDEA), 20 U. S. C. s. 1400, et. seq., which requires schools receiving federal funding to provide free and “appropriate” education to disabled students.

The case arose on behalf of an epileptic teenage girl in the school district serving Osseo and other schools in the northwest suburbs of Hennepin County, who was unable to attend classes in the mornings because of cognitive and physical afflictions related to her condition. A request by her parents for extended schooling hours, including evening instruction, under the IDEA was denied by the school district, and Senior U. S. District Court Judge Michael J. Davis in Minnesota upheld that decision, as did a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that included Judge David Stras from Minnesota.

Both of those tribunals held that the school district did not act with the type of “bad faith or gross misjudgment” necessary to sustain an IDEA case, based upon case law in other jurisdictions.

But the Supreme Court saw it differently with Chief Justice John Roberts writing for the entire bench reversing that ruling. He reasoned that the ordinary preponderance of evidence standard should be used in assessing school-related decisions by administrative personnel under the statue, rather than the heightened “bad faith/gross misjudgment” one.

Stripping schools of the elevated evidentiary standard will make it considerably easier for parents and their children to pursue IDEA cases and probably facilitate more favorable decisions on their behalf by school disability education authorities.

Mark Twain once observed that initially “God made idiots; that was for practice. Then he made school boards.”

To many today, Twain’s humorous remark is no laughing matter.

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PERSPECTIVES POINTERS

U.S. Schools by the Numbers

• Number of private Schools: 34,576
• Number of private school students:7 million
• Number of Catholic schools: 5,905
• Number of Catholic school students: 1.8 million
• Number of charter schools: 7,800
• Number of charter school students: 3.7 million
• Number of charter schools in Minnesota: 173
• Number of charter school students in Minnesota: 70,080.

Marshall H. Tanick is an attorney with the Twin Cities law firm of Meyer Njus Tanick.