Supreme Court Takes Pledge Case

[Pete C]

October 14, 2003
Justices Take Case on Pledge of Allegiance's Reference to God
By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 — The Supreme Court added the Pledge of Allegiance to the docket for its new term on Tuesday, agreeing to consider whether public schools violate the Constitution by requiring teachers to lead their classes in pledging allegiance to the flag of "one Nation under God."

The justices, who begin their daily session with heads bowed as the marshal intones "God save the United States and this honorable court," accepted a case that like the affirmative-action and gay-rights cases of the last term places the court at the center of a heated public controversy.

The case is an appeal by a California school district of a decision that has been the subject of an intense national debate since the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, issued it 16 months ago.

The Federal District Court in Sacramento initially dismissed a lawsuit brought by an atheist, Michael A. Newdow, who said he did not want his daughter exposed daily in her elementary school classroom to "a ritual proclaiming that there is a God." The Ninth Circuit overturned that decision, first ruling in June 2002 that the words "under God," added by federal statute in 1954, made the pledge itself unconstitutional.

In an amended opinion issued earlier this year, the court narrowed its ruling by confining it to the public school context, invalidating school policies that require teachers to lead willing students in the pledge. Ever since a Supreme Court decision on behalf of Jehovah's Witnesses in 1943, public schools may not compel students to recite the pledge. The Supreme Court indicated today that it would address only the recitation of the pledge in public schools, not its constitutionality as a general matter.

The Supreme Court's action today had several unusual elements that could have an impact on the eventual outcome. One was the decision by Justice Antonin Scalia not to participate in the case, an evident if unacknowledged response to a "suggestion for recusal of Justice Scalia" that Mr. Newdow sent to the court last month.

Mr. Newdow cited news reports of remarks the justice made at an event in Fredericksburg, Va., last January that was co-sponsored by the Knights of Columbus, the Catholic organization that a half-century ago played a leading role in persuading Congress to add "under God" to the pledge. According to the reports, Justice Scalia's speech at "Religious Freedom Day" pointed to the Ninth Circuit's decision in this case as an example of how courts were misinterpreting the Constitution to "exclude God from the public forums and from political life."

Mr. Newdow, who is a lawyer and medical doctor who has represented himself in the litigation, told the court that the remarks indicated that Justice Scalia was not just expressing general views on the Constitution but had formed a conclusion about the case itself, providing grounds for disqualification. The code of judicial conduct and a federal law that incorporates it both provide that judges "shall disqualify" themselves in cases where their "impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

While these provisions do not technically apply to Supreme Court justices, the justices adhere to them and recuse themselves from cases with which they have connections through stock holdings or personal associations. It is extremely unusual, however, for a recusal to be sought or granted on the basis of a public statement of opinion on the legal controversy before the court.

Another unusual aspect of the court's order today was the suggestion that at the end of the day, this case might not be suitable for decision. The court instructed the parties to discuss whether Mr. Newdow has standing to challenge the policy of his 9-year-old daughter's public school district, Elk Grove Unified School District, near Sacramento. The girl's mother, who has custody and to whom Mr. Newdow was never married, does not object to her daughter reciting the pledge.

[Clay Fink]

It's about time! I think all religions should be outlawed, along with all other absolutist ways of thinking.

[Cem]

and, of course, all extremists should be shot!

[Sergio Zamora]

Pledge a groovallegiance to the funk
The United Funk of Funkadelica
Uh, dey funk, well dey funk, today funk
Of da United Funk of Funkadelica

I pledge groovallegiance to the flag
Of funky, funky, funkadelica, yeah

[clinthopson]

There is only one decision that follows the COnstitution, but this Court doesn't necessarily follow those guidelines.

[Monte Smith]

I smell an election issue!

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Monte Smith
I smell an election issue!

It's an election non-issue, since nobody, no matter what they believe, can be elected if they do the right thing.

[Chaz Longue]

Sad but true, Pete.

Politicians of almost all stripes will demagog this issue to death no matter what happens. And this variety pisses me off more than most.

[Monte Smith]

Originally posted by Pete C
It's an election non-issue, since nobody, no matter what they believe, can be elected if they do the right thing.

Admirably cynical of you, Pete. But that doesn't make it not an election issue.

I like a set-up where its the Pledge of Allegiance versus Her Detractors.

[Tom Storer]

The Pledge of Allegiance becoming an election issue, with it (shining, upright, virtuous, true and feel-good) versus its detractors (whining, unpatriotic, godless, intellectual party-poops) is the kind of thing that makes me want to stick my head in the sand and hope politics will all go away.

[Gary Sisco]

Anyone remember Tuli's "I tit a tittance, to the tit, of the United Tit of Ameritit..."?

I'm on the refusenik kids' side, far as schools go. No one should be required to take an oath of allegiance, if only because it wouldn't be an oath, if required. Of course, logic plays little role in American life, almost as little as the Constitution does these days. Second, since no one teaches kids today about their political heritage or even what a republic is, it seems like a kind of silly ritual to me. Mindless repeating of words whose political content has zero meaning to them.

Refusing to stand or recite the pledge was one of the first things in me brief school career that started getting my ass beaten on a regular basis by jocks and rednecks, and three different teachers as well. I started refusing in eight grade and suffered for that little exercise in political freedom, let me tell you what. I also got a really good lesson in what little importance gets placed on the *to the republic for which it stands" part, as opposed to the symbol, which is nothing and doesn't matter. Therefore, it becomes in America the important thing. Not the republic, but the flag. Anything emotional gains huge import in the US. Anything real and political, nearly none, when it originates from the people, as it's supposed to.

It's one thing when you're an adult (and I've taken nuff shit for it as an adult, too) and social pressure, especially violent social pressure, doesn't land so heavy on you. But when you're a kid that kind of pressure and force to comform can be as intense an experience as official government repression.

In this case, the plaintiff has a weak argument. What matters is not what the father thinks, but what the kid thinks about it and whether or not the kid wants to pledge or feels forced into it, even by social pressure (which, in any society, even under Stalin, is and always has been the heaviest pressure to deal with) and also what matters, obviously, is the principle itself and whether schools ought to be insisting on such things as de rigeur policy to begin with.

What if the teacher was a refusenik? (As I would be in such a case?)

[Pete C]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
Second, since no one teaches kids today about their political heritage or even what a republic is, it seems like a kind of silly ritual to me.

Yeah, and how many kids even know who Richard Stands was?

[Gary Sisco]

Good one, Pete.

My mom has another story from school where one of the kids used to recite "one naked individual..."

[Brian Olewnick]

Interesting that Scalia is excusing himself from the case as he's made public pronouncements on the issue in the past (in favor of the God clause, of course). It'd be a real nice, if only symbolic, victory for rational thought if it gets jettisoned. Though it could also mobilize the nutso religious right to promote ever more neanderthal candidates...

[Gary Sisco]

The hilarious thing to me about it is that many Americans believe it's some kind of sacred document, like the Declaration of Independence or something, when it had its origins in the rightwing propaganda that they used to circulate in schools, *The Weekly Reader,* for unsuspecting kids who thought that shit was just entertainment for children. Doctors' offices often had it available as well.

And the "under God" part wasn't even in the original sacred oath. That got inserted at the height of McCarthyism.

Such a load of bullshit, the whole thing is.

If you discount the population over 65, less than 1% of the population of the US has done any time in the service at all. Never mind combat, where the figure would be miniscule, indeed, given that most people in the service never even hear a shot fired in anger during their whole hitches.

And if you take out the many millions of guys and gals of the Vietnam Era out of that picture, it declines to such a point that we'd need special instruments merely to figure out what a tiny percentage of the people we're really talking about.

They want to pledge allegiance, but only if it's a mindless ritual that requires nothing of one but standing and getting a moronic look of attempted seriousness on their faces for a second. Then it's back to the hot dog and the game.

What a load of bullshit. What does allegiance sans obligation mean? Not a whole lot, clearly.

[Tanager]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
And the "under God" part wasn't even in the original sacred oath. That got inserted at the height of McCarthyism.

Inserted in 1954, I believe. This is the part that astonishes me. Get rid of it, I say.

Under the current administration, we could use

"One divided nation, under the Devil"

[Monte Smith]

Man, this is slow and over the plate.

[RBS]

This is the kind of nonsense that is just a boring and stupid waste of time.

Number one, who cares? If you don't want to recite it, don't recite it.

Number two, if you want to say "Under God," say "Under God." If you don't want to,
then don't. There are so many more important issues, like the Ten Commandments
in some Bible-toting Judge's courthouse.

Or landing in a flight suit on a navy carrier. I'm really getting more and more sick of this candy-coated lack-of-depth political garbage than ever before. Who the hell cares?

[Monte Smith]

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Originally posted by Brian Olewnick
Interesting that Scalia is excusing himself from the case as he's made public pronouncements on the issue in the past (in favor of the God clause, of course).

That's the *reason* he's recusing himself.

The "under God" phrase was insterted at the behest of the Knights of Columbus.

The decision is likely to hinge on the notion of "ceremonial deism," a phrase introduced in 1962 by Eugene Rostow, the dean of Yale Law School. As staunch a guardian of liberal rights as Justice William Brennan, an ardent defender of separation of church and state, wrote that the references to God in the pledge and the national motto were examples of a "ceremonial deism protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content."

[SinginSumo]

Originally posted by Squaredancecalling Steve
...chiefly because they have lost through rote repetition any significant religious content."

Such examples have not been lost through rote repetition to ME (and, it seems, most others on this thread).

[Gary Sisco]

It's not quite as easy as is fliply said above, just "not to say it." I was beaten many times for refusing to stand or say it, and when you're 14 or 15, or younger than that, it takes some balls to continue a practice that's guaranteed to get your own little ass kicked, again. Not many kids have what it takes, and fewer adults it seems, today. I know of very few
Americans today who are willing to do anything at all that might actually cost them something, never mind a beat down. People like to talk that shit, but they don't walk it much. This population would just get on the trains if told to by armed people. It's amazing, actually, how timid Americans have become, which is, to me, an argument against the kind of soft and coddled life they've come to expect as some sort of birth right.

If the Pledge of Allegiance is not a sign of insecurity, why should anyone be forced to recite it? It's like having someone declare their love for you under threat.

If one considers the USA to be one's country, as I do, I think allegiance to it is a given.

Meaningless flag-waving crap! IMO

BTW When I was a Scandinavian kid attending P.S. 102, I had make the pledge every morning.

[Monte Smith]

Yes, Monte, re-creating the past takes on a special significance as we see your people attempt to flush our future down the toilet.

[Chris D]

So, Monte, will you advise the GOP to run "Bush '88" all over again?

"Their blue is not a real blue! Their red, not a real red!"

Who will play Willie Horton?

[Gary Sisco]

Shit, Chris, these concepts are becoming so alien to Americans on all but the emotional level that they don't even remember what allegiance means. It's the ritual that matters to them. Someone sometime told them it was patriotic to do it and so they do. That's all. 80 percent at least couldn't tell you what a republic is, or was meant to be. Never mind why.

This is the case to such an extent -- and to make the whole pledge deal really absurd -- that they've recently done away with the parts of the oath of citizenship taken by immigrants that require renouncing allegiance to foreign princes, kings, powers, popes, and etc., and also the part that used to require the new citizen to swear to defend the society and the Constitution, with arms if necessary.

I guess it's only school kids who are expected to pledge their allegiance, now. Immigrants are not. Strange but true.

All that's required for citizenship now is to memorize the answers to about 20 multiple choice questions. Who's the president, and etc. That simple minded. (I worked with a guy from Denmark who took the test last year. It's amazingly dimwitted. Anyone could memorize the answers and still have not a clue about the US, never mind its political heritage.)

Of course, on the other hand, why should immigrants be required to know anything more than native-born citizens?

[Gary Sisco]

They're also busy flushing the past and present down the toilet as well.

We're into it again with Medicare because the geniuses in Washington, of both parties, have borrowed and spent so much of other people's money that they'll never have to pay back themselves, in idiotic military and domestic follies, that they're now talking about "co-payments" for homehealth services so that "people begin to use them more prudently." Thanks, you arrogant assholes. They ignore: 1) You have to be nursing-home level disabled to receive these services at all under Medicare, and 2) this would mean, in itself, that one has little wiggle-room for "prudence" in the use of the services that alone allow one to live in one's home, and 3) that these services are already so taxed and "prudent" as they stand that Americans like a friend of mine up the road, guy I went to high school with, who has MS is forced to live 24-7 in a recliner chair, often in his own piss and shit, because the agencies in charge can only come see him whenever they get around to it. And VT reportedly has the best such services. Some states already have none at all.

Nevertheless, we can flush trillions down the toilet and see to it that none of the richest people who've ever lived in all of history have to pay a single penny of it back. In fact, they own the debt and its interest and we'll be paying *them* back for the services we won't be getting.

Now, there's a social order so corrupt and self-serving that Mafia dons must just stand slackjawed in awe and admiration.

Hey, de balls on dese guys.

[Monte Smith]

"Dear Lord, please let the Left continue to be attached to deeply unpopular views in the minds of the American electorate."