In the early 20th century the ACLU filed a legal challenge against the state of Tennessee for their provision against the teaching of evolution. In the years since, the debate on science and religion has taken on new forms, but has hardly grown smaller. In the past several decades, opponents of evolution adopted a new argument, called Intelligent Design, suggesting that the incredible complexity of the universe could not have come about as random chance. ID supporters put it forward as a legitimate scientific alternative to evolution, worthy or being taught in schools. Evolution supporters naturally disagreed, which led to a number of legal clashes.

On this day, December 20, in 2005, in Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area, the first court case directly challenging the teaching of Intelligent Design, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, forbidding such teachings.

The court ruled ID was not science, but in fact religion, and as such a violation of the Establishment clause of the U.S. constitution (the one about the separation of Church and State). The decision equated ID to the religious belief of creationism, a common observation regarding the theory. The Pennsylvania judge, a Republican and a churchgoer, wrote “ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the subject of testing and research.”