US Court of Appeals Allows SI to Display Evolution Exhibits

The U.S. Court of Appeals rules that two exhibition areas in the National Museum of Natural History that focus on the scientific theory of evolution do not violate the First Amendment requirement of separation of church and state. The decision, which affirmed the decision of a lower court in Washington, D.C., also reports that the Smithsonian did not support or endorse any one religion by presenting exhibits with material on the evolutionary process. The suit was brought against the Smithsonian by Dale Crowley, Jr., a fundamentalist minister and executive director of the National Foundation for Fairness in Education in 1978, alleging that the use of federal funds in Museum exhibits, specifically the Dynamics of Evolution in 1979 and Ice Age Mammals and the Emergence of Man in 1974 was a violation of the separation of church and state.