The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday declined yet again a petition related to the constitutionality of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. This time, petitioner Michael Newdow challenged a New Hampshire law requiring teachers to lead students in the Pledge.
The Doe family's suit alleged that the statute violates the establishment clause, as well as the First Amendment's guarantee of free exercise of religion. The family was being represented by Newdow, a California lawyer and atheist who has carried out his own longtime campaign against the inclusion of "under God" in the pledge and school-led recitations of the pledge.
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In his appeal to the Supreme Court in Freedom From Religion Foundation v. United States (Case No. 10-1214), Newdow argued, among other things, that atheists are the nation's "most disenfranchised religious minority" and were deserving of the high court's protection.
He surely has a point about the status of atheists in America, but I'm not sure that teacher-led voluntary recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance are an especially pronounced example of disenfranchisement. In either case, courts have been clear and consistent on this point: the government's ceremonial invocation of a deity – whether printed on currency, on inscribed on buildings, or parenthetically mentioned in our Pledge – is allowed.
In a climate where presidential candidates are suggesting faith-based scrutiny for administration members, taxpayer money is flowing to religious schools and charities, school boards are posting the Ten Commandments, principals leave the front door open for religious indoctrination and proselytizing, and city councils everywhere seem determined to begin their meetings by praying to Jesus, we surely have bigger church-state fish to fry.
