Over the following decades, there have been legal challenges concerning the use of those two words in the Pledge. Two recent legal challenges also targeted state constitutions, and not the U. In , the Massachusetts case Jane Doe v.
Acton-Boxborough Regional School District involved a group of parents, teachers and the American Humanist Association in an action against a school district. In February , a judge ruled in favor of the school district. The military plane was flying without radar. Although the explosion created a gap in the Confederate defenses, a poorly One of a 3,unit final edition, the baby-blue vehicle was sent to a museum in Wolfsburg, Germany, where Volkswagen is Live TV.
This Day In History. History Vault. Art, Literature, and Film History. World War II. US Government. Sign Up. Civil War. The bill's sponsors, anticipating that the reference to God would be challenged as a breach of the Constitutionally mandated separation of church and state, had argued that the new language wasn't really religious. The case originated when Michael Newdow, an atheist, claimed that his daughter a minor whose name has not been released was harmed by reciting the pledge at her public school in Elk Grove, California.
If she refused to join in because of the "under God" phrase, the suit argued, she was liable to be branded an outsider and thereby harmed.
The appellate court agreed. Complicating the picture, the girl's mother, who has custody of the child, has said she does not oppose her daughter's reciting the pledge; the youngster does so every school day along with her classmates, according to the superintendent of the school district where the child is enrolled.
Proponents of the idea that the pledge's mention of God reflects historical tradition and not religious doctrine include Supreme Court justices past and present. Atheists are not the only ones to take issue with that line of thought. Advocates of religious tolerance point out that the reference to a single deity might not sit well with followers of some established religions. After all, Buddhists don't conceive of God as a single discrete entity, Zoroastrians believe in two deities and Hindus believe in many.
Both the Ninth Circuit ruling and a number of Supreme Court decisions acknowledge this. But Jacobsohn predicts that a majority of the justices will hold that government may support religion in general as long as public policy does not pursue an obviously sectarian, specific religious purpose. Bellamy, who went on to become an advertising executive, wrote extensively about the pledge in later years.
I haven't found any evidence in the historical record—including Bellamy's papers at the University of Rochester—to indicate whether he ever considered adding a divine reference to the pledge. So we can't know where he would stand in today's dispute. But it's ironic that the debate centers on a reference to God that an ordained minister left out. And we can be sure that Bellamy, if he was like most writers, would have balked at anyone tinkering with his prose.
Brandy L. Navy I first struggled with "under God" in my fourth-grade class in Westport, Connecticut.
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