Feds Won't Enforce School Patriotism Law

[Nambe]

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP)

A federal court on Tuesday barred education officials from enforcing a state law that requires public and private school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem each morning.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert F. Kelly agreed with the arguments of several plaintiffs, including a private school in Harrisburg, that the law violates students' right to freedom of expression under the First Amendment.

"I agree that (the law) unconstitutionally interferes with the school plaintiff's ability to express their values and forces them to espouse the commonwealth's views," Kelly wrote in issuing a permanent injunction.

The law also requires the American flag to be displayed in every classroom when school is in session.

Under the law, students can decline to recite the pledge and salute the flag on the basis of religious conviction or personal belief, but school officials must notify the parents of students who decline. ---

Privatize bush It’s a Good Thing

[foxglove1]

1. Another victory - what a great week this has been!

It almost feels like .. dare I say ... AMERICA again

:bounce:

Sue

[LifeDuringWartime]

2. indeed, indeed

this has been a really good week all-around. :)

[LauraK]

6. Good old Black Thurdsday lives on.

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. Another reason why...

....an appointive rather than an elective judiciary was a good call.

[October]

4. Yes!

I'd written an empassioned letter to then-governor Schweiker (who replaced Ridge), about this, but never received a reply.

This is indeed great news!

[benfranklin1776]

5. Outstanding!

Kudos to Judge Kelly for upholding the first amendment and underscoring the importance of having a judiciary respectful of individual liberties secured by the constitution. The Pennsylvania law is the result of kneejerk pseudo patriotic posturing and the timidity of the Pennsylvania legislature. I am reminded of the words of Mr. Justice Jackson's stirring opinion striking down West Virginia's law mandating compulsory recitation of the pledge of allegiance written almost sixty years ago as World War II raged. In Barnette v. West Virginia Mr. Justice Jackson wrote:



"Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end
thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as
well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at
other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security,
support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As
first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its
accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. . . . As
governmental pressure toward unity becomes greater, so strife becomes more
bitter as to whose unity it shall be. Probably no deeper division of our
people could proceed from any provocation than from finding it necessary to
choose what doctrine and whose program public educational officials shall
compel youth to unite in embracing. Ultimate futility of such attempts to
compel coherence is the lesson of every such effort from the Roman drive to
stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its pagan unity, the Inquisition,
as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the Siberian exiles as a means
to Russian unity, down to the fast failing efforts of our present
totalitarian enemies. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon
find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion
achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.

It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our
Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.
There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature
or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed,
and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce
that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not
public opinion by authority.

The case is made difficult not because the principles of its decision are
obscure but because the flag involved is our own. Nevertheless, we apply the
limitations of the Constitution with no fear that freedom to be
intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate
the social organization. To believe that patriotism will not flourish if
patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous instead of a compulsory
routine is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our
institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the
rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price
of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless
to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too
great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not
matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its
substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the
heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that
no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in
politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force
citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. "

Barnette v. West Virginia, 319 U.S. 624, 641-642 (1943).

[umcwb]

7. Kick, n/t

[MaineDem]

8. I saw "school patriotism law" and felt sick

It actually scared me to think there was such a thing.

Kudos to Judge Kelly! I hope this is a sign that things haven't gotten too far out of hand.