Background: Penn High School in Mishawaka, Indiana (Google Maps). Inset: Jennifer Reinoehl (YouTube).
A federal judge in Indiana dismissed a lawsuit filed by parents of five public school children who argued the school should be banned from teaching evolution because it amounts to the state coercing students into accepting atheism.
Jason and Jennifer Reinoehl sued the Penn-Harris-Madison School corporation, the Indiana State board of Education, and the Indiana Secretary of Education in May 2023. They alleged that the defendants were equally blameworthy in causing their family pain and suffering by “forcing” the children, “to learn and cite as truth religious origin stories that were different from those in which they believe in.”
Throughout the 35-page complaint in which the plaintiffs represented themselves as pro se litigants, the Reinoehls referred to evolution as “religious teaching” and a “religious myth of evolution.” Their argument appeared to be that evolution has not been proven to accepted scientific standards, and is — on that basis — religious in nature.
According to the plaintiffs, evolution is a “highly flawed scientific theory” that does not meet the proper criteria for scientific hypothesis and has been “scientifically disproven.” Over multiple pages, they argued that there is no way to test the theory of evolution just as there is no way to test the “Big Bang Theory.” Scientists, they said, subscribe to evolutionary theory because they, “have been indoctrinated with it while attending public schools and universities,” and they are “reluctant to abandon this religious teaching.”
The plaintiffs likened evolution to artificial sweeteners, asserting that, “scientists believed, without experimentation, that replacing sugar with these substitutes in foods and beverages would help people lose weight,” but that those scientists were proven wrong when obesity actually increased.
The Reinoehls also alleged that evolution was once “taught alongside eugenics,” and that like eugenics, evolution should be removed from curriculum as “pseudoscience.”
The plaintiffs argued that by including evolution in its science curriculum, Indiana is compelling its teachers to present information “that is inherently religious, not scientific, in nature.”
“Just as changing the name of Spontaneous Generation to Chemical Evolution does not make it a viable scientific hypothesis, changing the name of Atheism to Evolution does not make it any less a religion,” the complaint said. “Evolution is a non-scientific belief, made in opposition to the known, tested, and observed laws of science. It bestows upon ‘nature’ both intelligence and supernatural power to select and discern one animal from another. Evolution is inherently a religious origin myth, argument, or assertion that falls outside the realm of science. It is neither scientific nor a testable theory in the scientific sense.”
The defendants moved to dismiss on a number of procedural grounds as well as the substantive ground that the Reinoehls simply did not allege facts that amounted to religious coercion. Specifically, they pointed to the 1968 landmark Supreme Court case Epperson v. Arkansas, in which the Court struck down an Arkansas statute that prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools.
81-year-old Senior U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker — a Ronald Reagan appointee — made short work of the Reinoehls’ complaint and granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss. Barker ruled that whatever similarities exist between evolutionary theory and atheism, the teaching of evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause.
Barker quoted from a 1982 district court case in which the court said, “it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause.”
Jennifer Reinoehl also filed an unsuccessful lawsuit in 2021 against the Centers for Disease Control and 16 businesses over mask mandates and a 2024 lawsuit challenging Indiana’s ballot access.
The plaintiffs have not yet said whether they plan to appeal the dismissal. The parties did not immediately respond to request for comment.
You can read the court’s ruling here.
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