PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Pennsylvania Courts Strike Down Mandatory Pledge Recital
by Quinten Thursday July 17, 2003 at 04:25 PM
quinten@indypgh.org (email address NOT validated)

Forced patriotism was dealt a blow on Wednesday when US District Court Judge Robert F. Kelly struck down a Pennsylvania law requiring students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem, or face a letter home to their parents.

The case name is Circle School v. Fisher. The Circle School is a small, progressive private school near Harrisburg. Also a plaintiff in the case was Lower Merion High School student Maxwell S. Mishkin, whose father was one of the lead attorneys in the suit.

Kelly rejected the argument offered by the State that the recital was optional, ruling that the law's requirement that schools send a letter home for any child who did not recite the pledge made it an infringement of the children's free speech rights. The law's enforcement had been stayed since it's original enactment in February 2003, pending a final decision by the court.

According to wire reports, Attorney General Mike Fisher plans to appeal the decision, which comes 60 years after the Supreme Court's decision in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette [319 U.S. 624 (1943)].

In that case, a Jehovah's Witness sucessfully challenged the State's law requiring that students salute the flag or face expulsion. Kelly relied extensively on that decision in coming to his ruling, arguing that the letter home constituted disciplinary action of the kind explicitly barred by Barnette.

Although this ruling was at the lowest level of the Federal Court System, the District Court level, it may have implications for the handful of states with similar parental notice laws as well as the more than two dozen states that have laws mandating recital of the pledge, but allowing students to opt out if they maintain a "respectful silence". Colorado, Utah, and Tennessee have all passed "patriotism" laws similar to the Pennsylvania law in the last year.

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