A Resolution Introduced Again and Again, Never Quite Passed

Members of the United States House of Representatives have introduced resolutions to formally recognise Darwin Day at the federal level on several occasions since the mid-2000s, each proposing that the House designate 12 February as Darwin Day in recognition of Charles Darwin's contribution to science, and each resolution has died in committee without coming to a vote, so that Darwin Day has never achieved the kind of binding federal recognition some of its supporters have periodically sought, even as it continues to be marked informally and enthusiastically by individual universities, museums, and scientific and humanist organisations across the country without needing that formal designation to take place.

The gap between Darwin Day's wide informal observance and its lack of any official government recognition anywhere reflects the particular sensitivity of evolution as a subject in American public life, where legislators wary of being seen to take a side in the long-running political and religious controversy over the teaching of evolution in schools have shown little appetite for a largely symbolic resolution that would nonetheless generate exactly that kind of public controversy, leaving the day to be sustained entirely by the voluntary enthusiasm of the scientific and educational institutions that already choose to mark it each year.