December 16, 2002
Court rules atheist father has right to
pursue Pledge of Allegiance case
___By Robert Marus
___ABP Washington Bureau
___SAN FRANCISCO (ABP)--The "under God" case may go forward, according to a panel of federal judges.
___The same three-judge panel that declared the addition of the words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional ruled unanimously against a challenge to the case Dec. 4.
___A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that Sacramento, Calif., father Michael Newdow had the right to sue his daughter's school district for reciting the pledge. Earlier this year, Newdow, an atheist, argued--and the panel agreed--that his rights to raise his 8-year-old daughter were violated by the school district's policy of reciting the pledge.
___Although the pledge has been around since the late 1800s, Congress added the phrase "under God" to the oath in 1954, partially as a reaction to the perceived atheistic threat of communism.
___The judges said that both Congress' action to add the phrase and the Elk Grove Unified School District's policy of teachers leading recitation of the pledge constituted government endorsements of religion. The two-judge majority said this violated the First Amendment's ban on government establishment of religion.
___The decision caused a national firestorm of controversy when it was announced in June. A large majority in Congress as well as President George W. Bush and California Gov. Gray Davis condemned the ruling and reaffirmed the addition of "under God" to the pledge.
___Later the child's mother, Sandra Banning, told the press that she and her daughter were practicing Christians and not offended by the pledge. She also said the fact that Newdow--to whom she was never married--did not have custody of the child meant that he lacked standing to file the lawsuit.
___In their Dec. 4 ruling, the same three-judge panel that made the original ruling disagreed with Banning's argument. In an accompanying opinion written by Judge Alfred Goodwin, the court reaffirmed its original decision in strong language. "The pledge to a nation 'under God,' with its imprimatur of governmental sanction, provides the message to Newdow's young daughter not only that non-believers, or believers in non-Judeo-Christian religions, are outsiders, but more specifically that her father's beliefs are those of an outsider, and necessarily inferior to what she is exposed to in the classroom," Goodwin wrote.
___Goodwin was joined in the opinion by Judge Stephen Reinhardt. Judge Ferdinand Fernandez, who dissented from the original ruling, concurred in the most recent decision, but did not join Reinhardt and Goodwin in the opinion accompanying it.
___In dissenting from the earlier ruling, Fernandez said it was the product of "persons who most fervently would like to drive all tincture of religion out of the public life of our polity."
___The federal government has appealed to the 9th Circuit to review the case en banc, meaning a larger 11-judge panel will hear the case again. Many legal experts have said they expect the decision to be reversed if the court agrees to re-hear the case.
___ Legal experts still predict the case will be reversed when heard by the full court.
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