The Scopes Monkey Trial was a 1925 Tennessee prosecution in which high school teacher John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in violation of the state’s Butler Act. It became the first American trial broadcast live on radio, pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in front of a national audience, and set up the constitutional fight over religion in public school curriculum that the U.S. Supreme Court would not resolve for another four decades.
The Law Scopes Was Charged Under
The statute at the heart of the case was Chapter 27 of the Public Acts of Tennessee of 1925, better known as the Butler Act. It made it illegal for any teacher at a public school or university receiving state funds to teach any theory denying the biblical account of human creation, or to teach that humans had descended from other animals.1UMKC School of Law. Tennessee Evolution Statutes
Violation was a misdemeanor. The law set fines between $100 and $500 per offense and carried no jail time.1UMKC School of Law. Tennessee Evolution Statutes Tennessee was not alone. Thirty-seven states considered some form of anti-evolution legislation during the 1920s, with Mississippi and Arkansas passing outright bans of their own.
A Staged Test Case in Dayton
The trial did not happen by accident. A group of Dayton businessmen engineered it after George Rappleyea, a local mining company manager, spotted a newspaper advertisement from the American Civil Liberties Union offering to defend anyone in Tennessee willing to challenge the new law. Rappleyea brought the idea to a meeting at F.E. Robinson’s drugstore, where Robinson (president of the local school board), the county superintendent, and several other civic leaders agreed a high-profile trial could bring attention and money to a town whose population had been shrinking for years.
They recruited John Scopes, a 24-year-old science teacher and part-time football coach at Rhea County High School, to serve as the defendant. Scopes agreed, was arrested on May 7, 1925, and charged with teaching evolution. By most accounts he was not even certain he had actually taught the material from the textbook. That did not matter, because the case was designed from the start to test the law rather than to defend him.
Once word spread, Dayton filled with reporters from as far away as London and Hong Kong, along with street preachers, vendors, and curiosity-seekers. Banners around town read “Read Your Bible” and “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” WGN Radio spent a thousand dollars a day to carry the proceedings live, making Scopes the first American trial to reach a national radio audience.
Darrow, Bryan, and What Made the Trial Famous
Two of the era’s most prominent public figures took opposite sides. Clarence Darrow, at 68 the most famous defense attorney in the country and a committed agnostic, volunteered to represent Scopes without a fee. He saw the Butler Act as an assault on intellectual freedom.
William Jennings Bryan joined the prosecution as special counsel. Bryan had run for president three times and served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, and in his later years had become the nation’s most visible opponent of evolutionary theory, arguing that Darwin’s ideas undermined morality. His involvement turned a misdemeanor prosecution into a national event. The local lawyers handling the formal charges became supporting players once Darrow and Bryan arrived.
Bryan on the Witness Stand
The trial’s defining moment came on its seventh day, when Darrow called Bryan himself to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Bryan agreed over the objections of the rest of the prosecution team. Because of the July heat and genuine concern that the courtroom floor might collapse under the weight of the crowd, Judge John Raulston moved the session outdoors, where thousands of spectators gathered on the courthouse lawn.
Darrow spent nearly two hours pressing Bryan on whether the Bible should be read literally. Did Jonah really live inside a whale? Was the Earth created in six twenty-four-hour days? Was Eve literally made from Adam’s rib? Bryan held firm at first, but eventually conceded that the word “day” in Genesis might not mean a literal day. The concession horrified his fundamentalist supporters and cut against the entire premise of the Butler Act.
The exchange grew hostile. Bryan accused Darrow of insulting the Bible. Darrow shot back that Bryan was insulting every person with a mind who could think. Judge Raulston struck the testimony from the record the next morning, ruling it irrelevant to the narrow question of whether Scopes had broken the law. Newspapers across the country ran the story as a defeat for fundamentalism anyway.
The Verdict, the Fine, and Bryan’s Death
The legal question itself was never really in dispute. Darrow asked the jury to return a guilty verdict, hoping to create grounds for an appeal that would reach a higher court and strike down the Butler Act. The jury obliged after nine minutes of deliberation. Judge Raulston imposed the minimum fine of $100.1UMKC School of Law. Tennessee Evolution Statutes
Five days after the trial ended, Bryan died in his sleep in Dayton. He was 65. He had stayed in town working on a lengthy closing statement he never delivered in court. The death was attributed to a cerebral hemorrhage, though exhaustion and the strain of the trial likely contributed. Darrow, characteristically, said Bryan died of “a busted belly.”
The Appeal That Killed the Constitutional Challenge
The defense appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, hoping the justices would rule the Butler Act unconstitutional. The court refused, upholding the law’s validity. But it reversed Scopes’ conviction anyway on a procedural technicality that neither side had anticipated. Judge Raulston had personally set the $100 fine, but the Tennessee Constitution required that any fine exceeding $50 be assessed by a jury.2Justia. Tennessee Constitution Article VI Section 14 Because the jury had returned only a guilty verdict without setting the fine amount, the judge had overstepped his authority.3UMKC School of Law. John Thomas Scopes v. The State
Rather than send the case back for a new trial, the court noted that Scopes had left his teaching position and recommended that the attorney general drop the case. “We see nothing to be gained by prolonging the life of this bizarre case,” the court wrote.3UMKC School of Law. John Thomas Scopes v. The State The attorney general followed the suggestion. The strategic result was devastating for the defense. The Butler Act survived, and the ACLU lost its vehicle for a federal constitutional challenge.
Repeal and the Constitutional Legacy
The Butler Act stayed on the books in Tennessee for another four decades. Governor Buford Ellington signed House Bill 48 into law on May 17, 1967, repealing the prohibition effective September 1 of that year. The law had not been enforced since the Scopes case.
The constitutional question the Scopes trial failed to resolve was settled by the U.S. Supreme Court the following year. In Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), the Court struck down a nearly identical Arkansas anti-evolution statute, holding that banning the teaching of evolution violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because the law’s sole purpose was to promote a particular religious belief. A state’s authority over school curriculum, the Court wrote, “does not carry with it the right to prohibit, on pain of criminal penalty, the teaching of a scientific theory or doctrine where that prohibition is based upon reasons that violate the First Amendment.”4Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Epperson v. Arkansas
When anti-evolution advocates shifted tactics and began pushing laws that required teaching “creation science” alongside evolution, the Court blocked that approach too. In Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), the justices struck down a Louisiana law mandating equal treatment for creation science, finding that it lacked any genuine secular purpose and existed only to advance a religious belief about human origins.5Justia U.S. Supreme Court Center. Edwards v. Aguillard Together, the two decisions established the constitutional principle that laws like the Butler Act had been designed to achieve all along: state-sponsored religious orthodoxy in public schools. Scopes failed to produce that precedent in 1925, but the argument the trial launched eventually prevailed.