The Scopes Trial ended on July 21, 1925, but its aftermath played out over decades, reshaping American law, education, and culture in ways the original courtroom drama only hinted at. John Scopes was found guilty and fined $100, yet that conviction was overturned on a technicality. The anti-evolution law he violated stayed on the books for another 42 years, and it took until 1968 for the U.S. Supreme Court to finally rule that banning the teaching of evolution was unconstitutional.
The Verdict and Its Reversal
The jury convicted Scopes, and the judge fined him $100 for violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which prohibited teaching that humans evolved from other species. That fine turned out to be a procedural mistake. When the case reached the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1927, the justices pointed out that only juries, not judges, could impose fines exceeding $50 under state law. The court overturned Scopes’s conviction on that technicality.
Critically, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the Butler Act itself as constitutional. This was a blow to the defense team, which had hoped the appeal would strike down the law entirely. By reversing the conviction on procedural grounds, the court also eliminated any path to the U.S. Supreme Court, since there was no longer a standing case to appeal. The law remained intact, and the broader constitutional question went unanswered for decades.
William Jennings Bryan’s Death
William Jennings Bryan, the three-time presidential candidate who led the prosecution’s cause, died in Dayton, Tennessee, on July 26, 1925, just five days after the trial concluded. His death certificate listed “sudden apoplexy” (a stroke) as the cause. Bryan had been in declining health, and the grueling trial in the Tennessee summer heat likely took a toll. His death added a layer of myth to the proceedings. Supporters mourned a champion of faith; critics, including H.L. Mencken, were less kind. Either way, the trial became the defining final chapter of Bryan’s public life.
What Happened to John Scopes
Scopes chose not to return to his teaching position in Dayton. He also turned down lucrative offers to capitalize on his sudden fame through the lecture circuit. Instead, a group of scientists who had rallied to his cause during the trial took up a collection to fund his further education. Scopes used the money to attend graduate school in geology at the University of Chicago, a subject the trial had rekindled his interest in. He took three graduate courses in geology and audited a science course, but he never completed a PhD.
He eventually built a quiet career as a geologist in the oil and gas industry, living in Houston and Shreveport, Louisiana. He spent over three decades away from teaching and largely stepped out of the public spotlight. When journalists or historians came calling years later, Scopes had little to add beyond what had already been said about the trial.
More States Banned Evolution
Rather than discouraging anti-evolution sentiment, the trial’s outcome emboldened it. Mississippi passed its own law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools in 1926, spurred by evangelist T. T. Martin. Arkansas followed in 1928, becoming the third and final state to enact such a ban. Dozens of other states considered similar legislation during this period, and while most proposals failed, the political pressure was real enough to affect what teachers felt comfortable saying in their classrooms.
Tennessee’s Butler Act remained law until May 16, 1967, when the state legislature finally repealed it. By that point, the law had been more of a symbolic holdover than an actively enforced statute, but its presence on the books for 42 years underscored how slowly the legal landscape shifted.
The Chilling Effect on Textbooks
The trial’s most practical impact may have been on what American students actually learned. In the years following 1925, publishers grew cautious. Some biology textbooks reduced or softened their treatment of evolution to avoid controversy and protect sales in southern and rural markets. The word “evolution” itself sometimes disappeared from indexes and chapter titles, even when the underlying concepts remained.
The extent of this retreat has been debated by historians. Some scholars have argued that the narrative of a wholesale purge of evolution from textbooks was partly constructed later, in the 1960s, by curriculum reformers who wanted to distinguish their new materials from what came before. A closer look at popular textbooks from 1907 to 1963 suggests the picture was more complicated than a simple before-and-after story. Still, the chilling effect was real enough that when the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study released new high school biology textbooks in the early 1960s, the explicit, unapologetic treatment of evolution felt like a significant departure.
The Fundamentalist Movement Retreated
The Scopes Trial is often cited as a turning point for American fundamentalism, though not in the way its supporters intended. Despite the legal victory in Dayton, fundamentalists were widely mocked in the national press and in academic circles. H.L. Mencken’s blistering coverage from Dayton painted religious conservatives as backward and anti-intellectual, and that portrayal stuck in the public imagination.
Through the late 1920s and into the 1930s, the fundamentalist movement lost influence within major Protestant denominations. The Northern Baptist Convention rejected fundamentalist demands for stricter doctrinal standards. Within the Presbyterian Church, institutional leaders moved to neutralize fundamentalist influence at Princeton Seminary. By the 1930s, several small fundamentalist denominations had broken away from mainline bodies, but by most accounts, the movement had been routed from positions of institutional power. Fundamentalism didn’t disappear. It retreated into its own network of churches, Bible colleges, and radio programs, building an infrastructure that would re-emerge as a political force decades later.
Clarence Darrow’s Legacy
Clarence Darrow, already widely regarded as America’s greatest criminal defense attorney before the trial, saw his reputation grow even further. His dramatic cross-examination of Bryan on the witness stand became one of the most famous moments in American legal history, even though the defense technically lost the case. Darrow’s willingness to challenge religious literalism in open court cemented his image as a defender of free speech, science, and intellectual liberty. The trial became a permanent fixture in his legend, alongside his 1924 defense of Leopold and Loeb.
The Supreme Court Finally Weighed In
The constitutional question at the heart of the Scopes Trial, whether a state could legally ban the teaching of evolution, went unresolved for 43 years. It was finally settled in 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Epperson v. Arkansas. Susan Epperson, a young biology teacher, challenged Arkansas’s 1928 anti-evolution statute.
The Court ruled unanimously that the Arkansas law was unconstitutional. The opinion stated plainly that a state’s right to set its public school curriculum does not include the right to prohibit the teaching of a scientific theory when that prohibition is based on religious reasons. The law violated the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion, as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision effectively struck down every remaining anti-evolution statute in the country.
The ruling didn’t end the conflict. Within a decade, opponents of evolution shifted strategies, pushing for “creation science” and later “intelligent design” to be taught alongside evolution. Those efforts produced their own landmark court battles, most notably the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover case in Pennsylvania. The legal and cultural debate the Scopes Trial set in motion has never fully stopped.