A Tale of Two Trials

Kitzmiller v Dover was a seminal event in the history of the creationism/evolution controversy, and a seminal event for NCSE as well. Parents in the small town of Dover, Pennsylvania, sued the school district over a policy adopted in 2004 requiring the teaching of “intelligent design” (ID), a strategy for promoting creationism. A legal team was assembled consisting of the Pennsylvania ACLU, the public interest nonprofit Americans United for Separation of Church and State, NCSE, and the law firm of Pepper Hamilton. We began working together to craft and file a legal complaint, to assemble expert witnesses, and perform all of the other tasks needed to conduct a trial. The trial itself took twenty-one court days spread over six weeks, but most people don’t realize that preparation for the trial took almost a year.