Wright v. Houston Independent School District

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Wright v. Houston Independent School District was a 1972 American legal case where students on the Houston Independent School District in Houston, Texas sued the school district to prevent the district from teaching evolution and from adopting textbooks that incorporated evolution on the basis that they believed it inhibited their right to free exercise of religion and established a state religion in violation the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution. The United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, Houston division found that:^[1]

Plaintiffs' case depends in large measure upon their demonstrating a connection between "religion," as employed in the first amendment, and Defendants' approach to the subject of evolution. The Court is convinced that the connection is too tenuous a thread on which to base a first amendment complaint.

The students appealed the case to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, where the earlier decision was affirmed.