What are the current laws on teaching evolution or intelligent design in public schools?

Do the laws on what to teach vary state by state? If so, is there a state whose laws ban the teaching of evolution?

Since the public schools are under federal authority it has mandated that creationism cannot legally be mandated to be taught by the schools. However teachers can voluntarily speak on the issue of creationism in most states but often face legal opposition from anticreation groups and are shut down or censured by the school boards.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) passed by Congress a few years ago included an amendment that basically states that concerning the teaching of subjects like biology where subjects like evolution are taught controversial views should be taught as well. This law by Congress which is the highest law of the land allows the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID) as an alternate scientific theory to evolution. However, once again, the courts are being used to prevent schools from teaching ID. One federal court ruled that in the Dover school district, ID was creationism and prevented it from being taught. That judge went against the Congress’ NCLB act. perhaps it’s going to take a case that goes to the Supreme Court to backup the existing congressional law allowing an alternate view of evolution to be taught by the government schools.

Often people opposed to ID will say that the NCLB Act amendment is not a law but a guideline which is foolish or else that that admendment was dropped from the legislation. The truth is that the admendment was revised and is more clearer on the subject than the first draft and is still apart of the NCLB Act. A half truth is often used to mislead people.

The other thing to be aware is that most people including scientists have not seen a sound view of ID. ID is based on total scientific evidences such as Irriducible Complexity, Design Theory and Information Theory. The point is that people can disagree with these evidences but they are scientific evidences subject to testing as good science should be and should not be censured because of personal beliefs.