News Flash

Supreme Court To Decide Pledge of Allegiance Case

(Washington, D.C.- May 12, 2003) The Justice Department has acted on George W. Bush’s and John Ashcroft’s stated wish that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal’s June 2002 ruling be quickly overturned. It has appealed to the Supreme Court with the intention of having overturned, the lower court’s ruling that the inclusion of the phrase ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional.

Solicitor General Ted Olsen argued in his thirty-page petition to the Supreme Court that existing precedent does not prohibit the state from acknowledging the nation’s “religious heritage,” as it does in the current Pledge of Allegiance.

Under intense public pressure from the public and opportunistic politicians, the Ninth Circuit amended its earlier decision in February 2003. The Court said that the June ruling would apply only to the California law requiring a teacher lead recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in that state’s public elementary schools and not the entire Ninth Circuit Court’s jurisdiction, which encompasses Guam and nine states and includes over nine million elementary school students.

The original decision would have overturned the 1954 federal law that mandated the inclusion of the religiously charged phrase in the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance.

California Humanist Michael Newdow initiated the case when he filed suit in March 2000, arguing that the Pledge of Allegiance violated the Establishment Clause and that it forced “religious dogma” on his daughter. The local federal district court dismissed the case but Newdow appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court.

The Ninth Circuit Court’s decision will not take effect until all appeals are exhausted. The Supreme Court will soon decide whether to consider the case.

Press Room