Compare And Contrast Edwards Vs Aguillard

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Edwards v. Aguillard
Edwards v. Aguillard is a supreme court case that challenges the legality of the Creationism Law. The creationism law said that you didn’t have to teach evolution,but if you did you also had to teach creationism. The law was ruled unconstitutional in a federal court and then an appeals court. It was then moved to the supreme court, the supreme court ruled in a 7-2 decision that the law broke the establishment clause and therefore was unconstitutional.(Gordon)
The law was first challenged by a parent of student who objected the legality of the Creation Law. The parent said that the law violated the separation of church and state. Don Aguillard was a high school teacher who was one of the challengers. He believed that creationism …show more content…

Aguillard was Lemon v. Kurtzman. In Lemon v. Kurtzman a Pennsylvania law was challenged. The law allowed the state to give some compensation to private school teachers who only teach secular classes. Alton Lemon was a Pennsylvanian instructor who opposed the law and so he challenged it. David Kurtzman was the Superintendent of the department of public instruction in Pennsylvania at the time of the challenge. He was listed as a respondent to the challenge. At first the court case went through a three judge district court where it ruled that the law was constitutional. It was then appealed to the supreme court where they accepted the case. The supreme court ruled in an unanimous 8-0 decision that the law was unconstitutional. …show more content…

§§ 17:286.1-17:286.7 (West 1982), is facially invalid [p581] as violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”(Edwards v. Aguillard)
The ruling helped many people by deciding several things at the same time. It helped solidify that the States cannot pass a law requiring the teaching of creationism or other religious text that the main purpose is to restrict the teachings of evolution. It also helped by using the lemon test, which wasn’t decided too long before this case, become a more accepted as a way to determine if a law was unconstitutional. It helped to clarify what a law could and couldn’t do when involving religion and schools.(Dorman)
Sometimes a politician will try to bring their religion into government. This is unconstitutional and should not happen. They swear an oath when they join office to uphold

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