Oklahoma's Senate Bill 1742 — one of two bills attacking the teaching of evolution and of climate change active in the Oklahoma legislature during 2012 — is dead, having died in committee on March 1, 2012, when a deadline for bills in the senate to be reported from their committees passed.

NCSE is pleased to announce the debut of a new resource in the climate change section of its website: "Voices for climate change education."

Senate Bill 374 (PDF), prefiled in the Louisiana Senate on March 1, 2012, and provisionally referred to the Senate Committee on Education, would, if enacted, repeal Louisiana Revised Statutes 17:285.1, which implemented the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, passed and enacted in 2008.

John Freshwater's legal challenge to the decision to terminate his employment as a middle school science teacher in Mount Vernon, Ohio, was defeated again, on March 5, 2012, when Ohio's Fifth District Court of Appeals upheld (PDF) a lower court's rejection of his challenge.

NCSE is pleased to announce the winners of the Friend of Darwin award for 2012: Judy Scotchmoor, the Assistant Director for Education and Public Programs at the University of California Museum of Paleontology who led the development of the popular Understanding Evolution website, and Zach Kopplin, the young activist who as a high school student in Baton Rouge in 2011 launched a drive to repeal Louisiana's antievolution law.