Comparison of skull features of early human species. Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum, United Kingdom. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
A model state bill to safeguard the religious neutrality of public education is making headway across the country — and evolution education in particular would be protected.
Styled the Keep Proselytizing Out of Public Schools (KPOP) Act, or less whimsically the Student Secular Bill of Rights (SSBOR), the model bill seeks to codify long-standing Establishment Clause case law into state statutes.
Four bills based on the model bill have been introduced so far in three states: Kansas's House Bill 2431 and the identical Senate Bill 424, Oklahoma's Senate Bill 3488 (PDF), and Vermont's House Bill 405 (PDF).
The Oklahoma and Vermont bills explicitly provide that public school students have a right to be free from "any religious instruction as part of a school curriculum, including creationism and intelligent design."
The Kansas bills omit "including creationism and intelligent design," but contain a preamble describing the Supreme Court's decisions in Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) and Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), which protected the teaching of evolution.
The model bill was drafted by a national coalition of secular organizations, including American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation Action Fund.
A guide and advocacy toolkit is available on the Freedom from Religion Foundation Action Fund's website.
