## Facts

- John Thomas Scopes, a public-school teacher in Rhea County, Tennessee, was indicted under the Tennessee Anti‑Evolution Act of 1925 for teaching that humans descended from a lower order of animals and thereby denying divine creation “as taught in the Bible.”
- The statute made such instruction unlawful in publicly funded schools and prescribed a misdemeanor fine range of $100 to $500 per offense.
- A jury found Scopes guilty in the Rhea County Criminal Court.
- The trial judge imposed the minimum $100 fine after the jury returned only a general verdict.
- On appeal, a late-filed bill of exceptions was stricken, limiting review to issues apparent on the record, including the statute’s validity, the indictment’s sufficiency, and the legality of the fine-setting procedure.

## Issues

1. Whether the Anti‑Evolution Act was unconstitutional under the Tennessee Constitution or the Fourteenth Amendment (including objections grounded in due process and religious freedom).
2. Whether the Act was void for indefiniteness because its terms failed to provide a clear standard of prohibited teaching.
3. Whether an indictment tracking the statute’s language was legally sufficient.
4. Whether Tennessee law required the jury, rather than the judge, to fix the amount of the fine within the statutory range.

## Decision

- The Tennessee Supreme Court held the Anti‑Evolution Act constitutional.
- The court construed the Act as targeting instruction that humans evolved from a lower type, rejecting vagueness challenges based on common usage and ordinary meaning.
- The court held the indictment sufficient because it followed a sufficiently definite statute.
- The court reversed Scopes’s conviction and remanded because the trial judge, not the jury, set the fine amount, contrary to Tennessee law governing jury-assessed fines in misdemeanor cases.

## Legal Principles

- Statutory terms in common use are read in their natural and ordinary sense; a criminal statute is not void for uncertainty if its meaning can be determined in that manner.
- When a statute is sufficiently definite, an indictment that follows the statute’s language is generally sufficient.
- A state may condition public-school employment on compliance with legislatively prescribed curricular restrictions; a teacher has no constitutional entitlement to teach contrary to those directives in publicly funded schools.
- Where state law assigns the assessment of a fine within a statutory range to the jury, a judge’s unilateral fixing of the fine is reversible error.

## Conclusion

The court sustained Tennessee’s prohibition on teaching human evolution in publicly funded schools but set aside Scopes’s conviction on procedural sentencing grounds because the jury did not determine the fine amount required by state law.


Scopes v. State, 289 S.W. 363 (Tenn. 1927)