INDIANAPOLIS – The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana’s top lawyer says that a pending bill that would allow schools to teach creationism in science classes clearly violates the U.S. Constitution and invites legal challenges.

U.S. Supreme Court precedents “going back many years” have established the unconstitutionality of teaching creationism in public schools, Ken Falk said.

“The idea that somehow our state legislature can trump the Constitution just doesn’t make sense,” Falk said in a news release issued by the ACLU.

The Senate Education Committee voted 8-2 Wednesday to send the bill before the full Senate despite experts and even some senators saying teaching creationism likely would be ruled unconstitutional if challenged in court. The bill’s prospects for advancing to the House weren’t certain.

Falk said the U.S. Supreme Court in its 1987 case Edwards v. Aguillard struck down a Louisiana statute that required instruction on evolution to be accompanied by teaching on “creation science.”

The court found that the Louisiana statute had no identifiable secular purpose, but that the “pre-eminent purpose of the Louisiana Legislature was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind.”