---
title: "Intelligent design in politics"
chunk: 6/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design_in_politics"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:30:07.671842+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

===== 2006 Ohio - Proposed Template for Ohio Teachers =====
A 2006 proposal before the Ohio Board of Education drafted by Conservative Board member Colleen Grady, would create a "template" based on the Discovery Institute's Critical Analysis of Evolution lesson plan for use by 10th-grade science teachers for classroom discussions evolution, global warming, stem-cell research and cloning.
Grady's proposal was widely regarded as an attempt to circumvent the board's February 2006 vote to retract a controversial model lesson plan and to remove the indicator on which it was based from the standards; the indicator, which called for students to be able to "describe how scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory," was generally criticized as providing a pretext for instilling scientifically unwarranted doubts about evolution.
Critics have noted that Grady's proposal will allow for the introduction of intelligent design in public schools, although the executive director of the Intelligent Design Network of Ohio, Roddy Bullock, says that the template would merely permit criticism of evolution, via a Teach the Controversy approach. However, in noting that the purpose of the template is to "open up these topics to different points of view, to different lines of evidence, to different interpretations of the evidence, to give students a more objective approach to science education," and given that outside of creationism and intelligent design there are no alternatives to evolution, various groups such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State are in opposition to the proposal.
In fact, on July 11, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a request under the Ohio open records law asking for copies of the Grady proposal as well as all documents and correspondence by the Board of Education and the Department of Education relating to proposed changes to the state’s science standards.  The group's executive director, Rev. Barry W. Lynn, urged the Ohio board to reject any effort to reopen the dispute over science education, noting
"Public school students in Ohio deserve sound science education, not religious dogma masquerading as science. It’s time for Religious Right allies on the board to drop their unwise agenda and focus on policies that will benefit all of Ohio’s students."

===== 2007 Mississippi, House Bill 625 =====
Representative Mike Lott (R-District 104) introduced House Bill 625 on January 9, 2007.  If enacted the bill would "authorize local school boards to allow for the teaching of creationism or intelligent design." Lott was quoted as saying,  "The school board of a school district may allow the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in the schools within the district. However, if the theory of evolution is required to be taught as part of the school district's science curriculum, in order to provide students with a comprehensive education in science, the school board also must include the teaching of creationism or intelligent design in the science curriculum". Similar bills to include the teaching of creationism and intelligent design in public classrooms were submitted in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2005. None were adopted.

===== 2009 Florida Senate Bill =====
In February 2009 Senator Stephen R. Wise announced that he was sponsoring plans to introduce a bill requiring teachers who teach evolution to also discuss the idea of intelligent design.

===== 2025 North Dakota, Senate Bill 2355 =====
State Senator Michael Dwyer (R-District 47) introduced Senate Bill 2355 four days after the second inauguration of Donald Trump, on January 24, 2025.  This bill as proposed would require a change to the state science content standards mandating that intelligent design be included and be taught as "a viable scientific theory." It passed through committee before failing on the second reading one month after it was introduced.

==== Intelligent design lawsuits ====

===== The Dover trial =====

In 2005, the constitutionality of presenting intelligent design in public high school science classes as a valid scientific alternative to evolution was considered by the court in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, the "Dover trial." There plaintiffs successfully argued that intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy requiring the presentation of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution as an "explanation of the origin of life" thus violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In his ruling, the judge found that intelligent design is not science and is essentially religious in nature and that "ID’s backers have sought to avoid the scientific scrutiny, which we have now determined that it cannot withstand, by advocating that the controversy, but not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous, and at worst a canard. The goal of the IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution which would supplant evolutionary theory with ID."