One of the most glaring omissions in both the play and the film is leaving out defense attorney Dudley Field Malone, who gave an impressive speech on why the government should not step into religious matters, among other things citing the religious wars of Europe in the 17th century. It was an immensely powerful argument to the town, jury, reporters and well admired... most were at least of a few different religious denominations and aware of the danger of the government preferring one church over another. Even the cynical H. L. Mencken said that "it was a great day for Ireland".

Likewise, Darrow's questioning of Bryan's beliefs was deeply resented by the town-it was seen as a big-city atheist lawyer mocking a pious man, which in a sense was true. Darrow was a volunteer addition to the ACLU team: he was in no way the lead. He'd asked to be a part of the trial, and in retrospect even though he made headlines it's hard to see how he greatly helped. Because a big problem with the general ItW story ( and the legend of the trial) is that the Dayton trial could not be not over whether the law was good or bad. It simply was a test case to start that process. The ACLU was looking for someone who'd actually taught evolution and broken that law, Scopes had volunteered because he had. He was going to be found guilty- that was really a formality, the jury had no choice but to "decide" only that question, and they did. The points his defense raised in court were not to get the jury to acquit, but to be used in the appeal to get the law struck down. Unfortunately, the Tennessee Law Court avoided the question, and found him innocent on a technicality, saying it saw no reason to further such a bizarre case. It was probably thinking of the Dayton circus moving to Nashville and setting up in front of its court.

The law managed to stay on the books in TN until 1966, when it was repealed with very little protest.