24-04-2025
Criminalizing votes of local officials is Tennessee's modern Scopes Monkey Trial
The following is adapted from a speech the author delivered to Justice Circle Nashville in February.
One hundred years ago, Tennessee passed a law that forbade teachers to teach evolution.
What happened next is well known: Teacher John Scopes, over by the mountains in Dayton, Tennessee, taught it anyway. And that led to a trial that pitted creationism against evolution —the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial, watched by the whole country.
But seeing the trial only as a battle between creationism and evolution skips over something important.
The law at issue in the Scopes trial was a criminal statute. It made teaching a controversial topic a crime — not a matter of curricular standards, or a personnel matter, but an actual crime. Just like robbery or murder.
Criminalizing the act of holding an opinion that the state government doesn't like, which is the basic act of engaging with ideas, is an intrusion of government power into the mind.
But now, one hundred years after the Scopes trial, rather than learning from the past, our state legislature — without, I'm sure, recognizing the embarrassing anniversary — has gone and done the same sad thing again.
This year, Tennessee — my beloved, green, home state — has again passed a law to criminalize opinion, and speech, and conscience.
Opinion: A century after Scopes 'monkey trial,' U.S. still debates theory of evolution
This law creates a new crime, punishing local elected officials for voting in favor of any so-called sanctuary policies regarding immigrants.
I am a member of Nashville's Metro Council, and voting there is an important way for us to share our opinions on public matters, speak to our constituents, and express our consciences. Criminalizing someone's opinion or speech should concern us whether we agree with that opinion or not.
Freedom of conscience is fundamental to us Americans, and if the government can criminalize one opinion, it can criminalize another, and another after that.
Our rich traditions of religious freedom, of scientific enterprise, of political progress — including the abolition of slavery and votes for women — could never have happened if the government could coerce people to silence their opinions.
Years ago, the state passed a law forbidding local sanctuary policies. We in Nashville's Metro Council have advanced no such proposal to undermine that law, and it has been my consistent practice not to vote for things that the Metro Council doesn't have the power to do.
I believe that would be a salutary practice across the board, including with this dreadful new act. In seeking to criminalize local officials for nonconformity to state preferences, the act violates the Constitution of the United States, which the State of Tennessee has no power to do.
At minimum, it rips the heart out of the First Amendment, which shields political speech and debate and protects opinions disfavored by the government. It also criminalizes the relationship between the people and their local representatives, makes the very act of speaking and voting in local assemblies a felony crime, if it's not what the state government wants.
I say we should all just stick to the U.S. Constitution.
But as this new Scopes Act shows, the Constitution is under attack. The only way those attacks can prevail is if enough of us get demoralized, lose our bearings, and let them.
For my part, I'm letting my neighbors in East Nashville know they have a representative who will adhere to the Constitution, who will not be demoralized, and who will not be intimidated.
Clay Capp is the Metro Council Member for District 6, in East Nashville.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: 100 years after Scopes Trial, TN still punishes dissenters | Opinion
