McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education involved an Arkansas statute that mandated “balanced treatment” of creationism and evolution in the curriculum of public schools. Applying the Supreme Court’s test developed in Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Arkansas District Court determined that the law violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it had no valid legislative purpose and impermissibly advanced religion. The court examined both the legislative history of the statute, and the history of creationism in Arkansas. First, despite the legislature’s insistence that the law was designed to foster “balance” and “fairness” in the curricula of Arkansas public schools, the court found that the actual purpose of the law was to advance religion; the individual who drafted the bill, the legislator who sponsored it, and the citizens who supported it all publicly announced the purpose of the bill was purely sectarian. This combined with Arkansas’s long history of official opposition to the theory of evolution led the court to conclude that the officially announced purpose of fairness and balance was mere pretense. Second, the core tenet of creationism, the court found, was the inerrancy of the Biblical account of the Earth’s creation found in the Book of Genesis. Further, there was no evidence that creationism had any valid scientific component. Since there was no evidence that creationism was science, the only effect of teaching it in public schools could be to advance the theory’s core religious tenet. Thus, the court held that both the purpose and effect of the law was to advance religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.
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