Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-05-17344/USCOURTS-ca9-05-17344-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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Volume 1 of 4

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

Dr. MICHAEL A. NEWDOW; PAT 

DOE; JAN DOE; DOECHILD; JAN

POE; POECHILD; ROECHILD-1,

Plaintiffs,

and

JAN ROE and ROECHILD-2,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v.

RIO LINDA UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT,

Defendant-Appellant,

Nos. 05-17257 and 05-17344

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; JOHN 06-15093

CAREY; ADRIENNE CAREY; BRENDEN  D.C. No. CAREY; ADAM ARAIZA; ANITA CV-05-00017- ARAIZA; ALBERT ARAIZA; MICHAELA LKK BISHOP; CRAIG BISHOP; MARIE

BISHOP; TERESA DECLINES; DARIEN OPINION

DECLINES; RYANNA DECLINES;

ROMMEL DECLINES; JANICE

DECLINES; ANTHONY DOERR; DAN

DOERR; KAREN DOERR; SEAN

FORSCHLER; TIFFANY FORSCHLER;

FRED FORSCHLER; ESTERLITA

FORSCHLER; MARY MCKAY; ROBERT

MCKAY; SHARON MCKAY; THE

KNIGHTS OF COLUMBUS,

Defendants-Intervenors-Appellants,

and 

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CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES OF 

AMERICA; ELK GROVE UNIFIED

SCHOOL DISTRICT; SACRAMENTO

CITY UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT; Dr.

STEVEN LADD, Superintendent, Elk

Grove Unified School District; M.

MAGDALENA CARRILLO MEJIA,

Superintendent, Sacramento City

Unified School District; Dr.

DIANNA MANGERICH,

 Superintendent, Elverta Joint

Elementary School District; FRANK

S. PORTER, Superintendent, Rio

Linda Unified School District;

PETER LEFEVRE, Law Revision

Counsel; ARNOLD

SCHWARZENEGGER, Governor of

California; RICHARD J. RIORDAN,

California Secretary for Education,

Defendants. 

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of California

Lawrence K. Karlton, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

December 4, 2007—San Francisco, California

Filed March 11, 2010

Before: Dorothy W. Nelson, Stephen Reinhardt, and

Carlos T. Bea, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Bea;

Dissent by Judge Reinhardt

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COUNSEL

Dr. Michael Newdow (argued), Sacramento, California, for

plaintiffs-appellees Jan Roe, et al.

Craig M. Blackwell, Theodore C. Hirt, Peter D. Keisler,

McGregor W. Scott, Gregory G. Katsas (argued), Robert M.

Loeb, Lowell V. Sturgill, Jr., Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for defendant-intervenor-appellant United States.

Terence J. Cassidy (argued), Michael W. Pott, Thomas L.

Riordan, Porter, Scott, Weiberg & Delehant, Sacramento, California, for defendant-appellant Rio Linda Union School District.

Kevin J. Hasson (argued), Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., Derek L.

Gaubatz, Eric C. Rassbach, Jared N. Leland, The Becket Fund

for Religious Liberty, Washington, D.C., for defendantsintervenors-appellants John Carey et al.

Amici:*

As Amicus Curiae in Support of Defendants-Appellants:

Patrick T. Gillen, Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the Thomas More

Law Center;

*The amici in this case are extensive and include the following: All 50

States; the Pacific Justice Institute; the American Legion; the National

Legal Foundation; the Thomas More Law Center; the Foundation for

Moral Law; Los Angeles County; Rex Curry; the Appignani Humanist

Legal Center; the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc.; American

Atheists Inc.; the Madison-Jefferson Society; the Secular Coalition for

America; the Atheists and Other Freethinkers, Humanist Association of

Las Vegas and Southern Nevada, Agnostic and Atheist Student Association, Las Vegas Freethought Society; and the Humanist Community,

Humanists of Houston, and the Humanist Association of the Greater Sacramento. We thank them all for their thoughts and efforts regarding this

case. 

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Peter D. Lepiscopo, James M. Griffiths, Law Offices of Peter

D. Lepiscopo, San Diego, California for the Pacific Justice

Institute;

Eric L. Hirschhorn, Anne W. Stukes, Andrew C. Nichols,

Winston & Strawn LLP, Washington, DC, and Philip B.

Onderdonk, Jr. for The American Legion, Indianapolis, Indiana;

Greg Abbott, R. Ted Cruz, Office of the Attorney General,

Austin, Texas; Lawrence Wasden, Attorney General of Idaho;

Drew Edmondson, Attorney General of Oklahoma; Troy

King, Attorney General of Alabama for all 50 States;

Roy S. Moore, Gregory M. Jones, Benjamin D. Dupré, for the

Foundation for Moral Law, Montgomery, Alabama;

Steven W. Fitschen, The National Legal Foundation, Virginia

Beach, Virginia, for the National Legal Foundation; and

Raymond G. Fortner, Jr., Ralph L. Rosato, Doraine F. Meyer

for the County of Los Angeles.

As Amicus Curiae in Support of Plaintiffs-Appellees:

Dr. Rex Curry, Tampa, Florida;

Chris J. Evans, American Atheists, Inc., Irvine, California; for

American Atheists, Inc.;

George Daly, Charlotte, North Carolina, for the Freedom

From Religion Foundation, Inc.;

Shawn C. Mills and Paul S. Sanford, Aptos, California, for

the Madison-Jefferson Society;

Herb Silverman, Washington, D.C., for the Secular Coalition;

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Norman Goldman, Los Angeles, California, for Atheists and

other Freethinkers, Humanist Association of Las Vegas and

Southern Nevada, Agnostic and Atheist Student Association,

Las Vegas Freethought Society, The Humanist Community,

Humanists of Houston, Humanist Association of the Greater

Sacramento; and

Melvin S. Limpan, Washington, D.C. for Appignani Humanist Legal Centerl.

OPINION

BEA, Circuit Judge:

I. Introduction

We are called upon to decide whether the teacher-led recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United

States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, by

students in public schools constitutes an establishment of religion prohibited by the United States Constitution. We hold it

does not; the Pledge is constitutional.

The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation

through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which

our Republic was founded and for which we continue to

strive: one Nation under God—the Founding Fathers’ belief

that the people of this nation are endowed by their Creator

with certain inalienable rights; indivisible—although we have

individual states, they are united in one Republic; with liberty

—the government cannot take away the people’s inalienable

rights; and justice for all—everyone in America is entitled to

“equal justice under the law” (as is inscribed above the main

entrance to our Supreme Court). Millions of people daily

recite these words when pledging allegiance to the United

States of America:

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I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States

of America, and to the Republic for which it stands,

one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and

justice for all.

4 U.S.C. § 4 (2002).

Pursuant to California Education Code § 52720, the Rio

Linda Union School District in California (“the School District”) has a practice that every morning, willing students, led

by their teachers, face the American Flag, place their right

hands over their hearts, and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

Plaintiff Jan Roe is a self-proclaimed atheist whose child,

RoeChild-2, attends elementary school in the School District.

Roe filed suit alleging that the words “under God” in the

Pledge offend her belief that there is no God, interfere with

her right to direct her child’s upbringing, and indoctrinate her

child with the belief that God exists. The parties have stipulated that RoeChild-2 has never recited the Pledge, but Roe

nevertheless asks us to prohibit the recitation of the Pledge by

other students. Thus, this case presents a familiar dilemma in

our pluralistic society—how to balance conflicting interests

when one group wants to do something for patriotic reasons

that another groups finds offensive to its religious (or atheistic) beliefs. In other words, does Roe have the right to prevent

teachers from leading other students from reciting the Pledge

of Allegiance—something we all agree is a patriotic exercise

—because the mention of God in the Pledge offends her as an

atheist?

Plaintiffs challenge the School District’s policy as constituting a violation of the Establishment Clause: “Congress

shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

U.S. Const. amend. I.

The Pledge reflects many beliefs held by the Founding

Fathers of this country—the same men who authored the

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Establishment Clause—including the belief that it is the people who should and do hold the power, not the government.

They believed that the people derive their most important

rights, not from the government, but from God:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men

are created equal, that they are endowed by their

Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among

these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence, 1 U.S.C. § XLIII (1776)

(emphasis added). The Founders did not see these two ideas—

that individuals possessed certain God-given rights which no

government can take away, and that we do not want our

nation to establish a religion—as being in conflict.

Not every mention of God or religion by our government

or at the government’s direction is a violation of the Establishment Clause. See Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 673

(1984) (“Nor does the Constitution require complete separation of church and state; it affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids

hostility toward any.”). The Supreme Court has upheld several government actions that contained a religious element

against Establishment Clause claims: a display of the Ten

Commandments on the Texas State Capitol grounds;1 the display of a Chanukah menorah outside a City-County Building;2

the display of a Nativity scene in a public Christmas display;3

a state legislature’s practice of opening each day with a prayer

led by a chaplain paid with state funds;4 a state’s property tax

exemption for religious organizations;5 and a township’s pro1Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 681 (2005). 

2County of Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573, 578-79 (1989). 

3Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 670-71 (1984). 

4Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 784-86 (1983). 

5Walz v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U.S. 664, 667 (1970). 

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gram for reimbursing parents for the cost of transporting their

children to parochial schools.6 Each of these cases involved

religion. But taken in context, none of the government actions

violated the Establishment Clause.

The plaintiffs and the dissent focus solely on the words

“under God” in isolation, stripped of all context and history.

Plaintiffs and the dissent even go so far as to disregard the

plain text of the preamble to 4 U.S.C. § 4 which sets forth that

Congress had two primary purposes in including the phrase

“one nation under God” in the Pledge: (1) to underscore the

political philosophy of the Founding Fathers that God granted

certain inalienable rights to the people which the government

cannot take away; and (2) to add the note of importance

which a Pledge to our Nation ought to have and which ceremonial references to God invoke. The Supreme Court has

instructed us to do otherwise: “Focus exclusively on the religious component of any [governmental] activity would inevitably lead to its invalidation under the Establishment Clause.”

Lynch, 465 U.S. at 678. Were the correct focus as the dissent

suggests, all of the above examples would have been found to

violate the Establishment Clause, for all contain religious

symbols or words. On the contrary, under Supreme Court law

we are instructed to examine the history and context in which

the phrase “one Nation under God” is used so that we may

discern Congress’ “ostensible and predominant” purpose

when it enacted the Pledge. See McCreary County v. ACLU,

545 U.S. 844, 867-68 (2005). Because California Education

Code § 52720 as implemented by the School District’s Policy

requires the recitation of the Pledge as a whole, we must

examine the Pledge as a whole, not just the two words the

Plaintiffs find offensive. In doing so, we find the Pledge is

one of allegiance to our Republic, not of allegiance to the God

or to any religion. Furthermore, Congress’ ostensible and predominant purpose when it enacted and amended the Pledge

over time was patriotic, not religious. 

6Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 8-11 (1947). 

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The Supreme Court has agreed the Pledge is a “patriotic

exercise designed to foster national unity and pride.” Elk

Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 6 (2004).

Even the dissent agrees on this determinative point. Dissent

at 4040 (“[T]he recitation of the Pledge both as originally

written and as amended is a patriotic exercise . . . .”). The

question about which we disagree is whether this patriotic

activity is turned into a religious activity because it includes

words with religious meaning. 

We hold that the Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the

Establishment Clause because Congress’ ostensible and predominant purpose was to inspire patriotism and that the context of the Pledge—its wording as a whole, the preamble to

the statute, and this nation’s history—demonstrate that it is a

predominantly patriotic exercise. For these reasons, the phrase

“one Nation under God” does not turn this patriotic exercise

into a religious activity.

Accordingly, we hold that California’s statute requiring

school districts to begin the school day with an “appropriate

patriotic exercise” does not violate the Establishment Clause

even though it permits teachers to lead students in recitation

of the Pledge. California Education Code § 52720. In doing

so we join our sister circuits who have held similar school

policies do not violate the Establishment Clause. See Myers

v. Loudoun County Pub. Schs., 418 F.3d 395, 409 (4th Cir.

2005) (upholding a Virginia statute requiring the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by students, but allowing students to sit or stand quietly if they object); Sherman v. Cmty.

Consol. Sch. Dist. 21 of Wheeling Twp., 980 F.2d 437, 447

(7th Cir. 1992), cert. denied, 508 U.S. 950 (1993) (same as to

an Illinois statute).7 Therefore, we reverse the district court’s

7Contrary to the dissent’s assertion, Myers and Sherman are not based

solely on Supreme Court dicta. We encourage the reader to read these

cases for himself for we find them to be not only well-written, but also

elegantly reasoned. 

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judgment and vacate the permanent injunction prohibiting the

daily recitation of the Pledge in the School District.

II. The Procedural History of this Case

This is not the first time the Pledge has been challenged in

our Circuit. In 2000, Newdow brought a similar Establishment Clause challenge against the Elk Grove Unified School

District’s policy requiring teachers to lead their classes in the

recitation of the Pledge. Newdow v. United States Congress,

2000 WL 35505916, at *1 (E.D. Cal. July 21, 2000). The district court rejected Newdow’s challenge and dismissed his

complaint. Id.

A divided panel of this Circuit reversed. Newdow v. United

States Congress, 292 F.3d 597 (9th Cir. 2002) (“Newdow I”).

In its opinion, the panel held Newdow had standing as a parent to challenge Elk Grove’s Pledge-recitation policy, because

the policy interfered with his right to direct his daughter’s

religious upbringing. Id. at 602. Over Judge Fernandez’s dissent, the majority (of which Judge Reinhardt was a member)

held Elk Grove’s policy violated the Establishment Clause. Id.

at 612.

Following the panel’s decision in Newdow I, the mother of

Newdow’s daughter intervened in the case to challenge Newdow’s standing to sue on the basis that a California Superior

Court had awarded her sole legal custody of the daughter.

Newdow v. United States Congress, 313 F.3d 500, 502 (9th

Cir. 2002) (“Newdow II”). The panel held the custody order

did not deprive Newdow of standing to challenge the Elk

Grove Pledge-recitation policy, even though he had lost custody of his daughter. Id. at 502-03.

The panel then issued an order amending its opinion in

Newdow I and denying panel rehearing and rehearing en banc.

Newdow v. United States Congress, 328 F.3d 466 (9th Cir.

2003) (“Newdow III”). The amended opinion did not reach the

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question whether the Pledge was constitutional and instead

invalidated, again over Judge Fernandez’s dissent, only the

Elk Grove School District’s policy. Id. at 490. Nine judges of

our Circuit dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc.

See Newdow III, 328 F.3d at 471, 482.

The Supreme Court of the United States reversed. Elk

Grove, 542 U.S. at 5. The Court held that Newdow, as a noncustodial parent with interests potentially adverse to those of

his daughter, failed to satisfy the requirements of “prudential

standing, which embodies judicially self-imposed limits on

the exercise of federal jurisdiction.” Id. at 11 (citation and

internal quotation marks omitted). Accordingly, the Court

held the Newdow III panel erred by reaching the merits of

Newdow’s Establishment Clause challenge. Id. at 17. 

Plaintiffs, including Jan Roe who has full custody of her

daughter, filed this action contending the teacher-led recitation of the Pledge in California public schools violates the

Establishment Clause. Newdow v. United States Congress,

383 F. Supp. 2d 1229 & n.1 (E.D. Cal. 2005) (“Newdow IV”).

The district court dismissed the majority of plaintiffs’

claims. As to the plaintiffs’ Establishment Clause claim

against the recitation of the Pledge in the School District, the

district court held this court’s decision in Newdow III

remained binding authority, despite the Supreme Court’s decision in Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow. Newdow IV,

383 F. Supp. 2d at 1240-41. Relying on Newdow III, the district court held the School District’s Policy requiring the

daily, voluntary recitation of the Pledge by students violated

the Establishment Clause. “Because this court is bound by the

Ninth Circuit’s holding in Newdow III, it follows that the

school districts’ policies violate the Establishment Clause.

Accordingly, upon a properly-supported motion, the court

must enter a restraining order to that effect.” Id. at 1242. The

district court stayed the permanent injunction pending any

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appeals to this court and to the Supreme Court. This timely

appeal followed.

III. Standard of Review

We review a district court’s grant of a permanent injunction

for abuse of discretion. Biodiversity Legal Found. v. Badgley,

309 F.3d 1166, 1176 (9th Cir. 2002). However, we review

legal questions underlying the district court’s grant of injunctive relief de novo. Id. Whether a statute violates the Establishment Clause is a question of law we review de novo.

Vasquez v. Los Angeles County, 487 F.3d 1246, 1254 (9th Cir.

2007).

IV. Standing

It is important to distinguish exactly which statutes are

challenged on appeal and which are not. Only California Education Code § 52720 and the School District’s Policy are at

issue in this case. The district court dismissed plaintiffs’ challenge to the 1954 Amendment to the Pledge, and their direct

challenge to the Pledge, as codified in 4 U.S.C. § 4. Newdow

IV, 383 F. Supp. 2d at 1242. Plaintiffs did not cross-appeal

this dismissal of their claims challenging the 1954 amendment

to the Pledge and the codification of the Pledge at 4 U.S.C.

§ 4, and therefore they have abandoned those claims on

appeal.

[1] Even though Plaintiffs do not assert they have standing

to challenge the 1954 Amendment, the Dissent assumes they

do. Plaintiffs do not have standing to challenge the 1954

Amendment because no federal statute requires plaintiffs to

recite the Pledge. Even under the School District’s Policy,

children “may choose not to participate in the flag salute for

personal reasons” or they can simply omit any words they

find offensive. 

To satisfy standing requirements, a plaintiff must prove:

“(1) he has suffered an ‘injury in fact’ that is (a) concrete and

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particularized and (b) actual or imminent, not conjectural or

hypothetical; (2) the injury is fairly traceable to the challenged action of the defendant; and (3) it is likely, as opposed

to merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a

favorable decision.” Friends of the Earth, Inc. v. Laidlaw

Envt’l. Servs. (TOC), Inc. 528 U.S. 167, 180-81 (2000) (citing

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61 (1992)).

[2] Plaintiffs are unable to show the 1954 amendment

causes them to suffer any concrete and particularized injury

because nothing in the Pledge actually requires anyone to

recite it. To the contrary, however, because the Pledge does

not mandate that anyone say it, Newdow has no personal

injury to contest its wording in the courts. Rather, his remedy

must be through the legislative branch.

[3] Instead of a particularized injury, plaintiffs would, at

most, be asserting “generalized grievances more appropriately

addressed in the representative branches”, which do not confer standing. Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751 (1984); see

also Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for

Separation of Church & State, Inc., 454 U.S. 464, 489-90

n.26 (1982). Additionally, the 1954 Amendment did not

involve Congress’ power to tax and spend, U.S. Const. art. I

§ 8, so the narrow exception established in Flast v. Cohen,

392 U.S. 83, 88 (1968), allowing a taxpayer to bring an Establishment Clause challenge to the use of public funds does not

apply.

V. The Lemon Test

We turn now to the merits of the plaintiffs’ Establishment

Clause claims.8 There are three possible tests for determining

whether a statute violates the Establishment Clause—the

8The Establishment Clause applies to the states through the Fourteenth

Amendment. Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 8 (1947). 

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Lemon test, the Endorsement test and the Coercion Test. We

examine each in turn.

Plaintiffs contend the School District’s policy violates the

Establishment Clause test announced in Lemon v. Kurtzman,

403 U.S. 602 (1971), commonly known as the “Lemon test.”

Although the Lemon test has been widely criticized, our court

has reaffirmed its continuing vitality. See Card v. City of

Everett, 520 F.3d 1009, 1013 (9th Cir. 2008); Access Fund v.

USDA, 499 F.3d 1036, 1042 (9th Cir. 2007) (“The Lemon test

remains the benchmark to gauge whether a particular government activity violates the Establishment Clause.”). 

[4] Under the Lemon test, to be constitutional (1) the challenged governmental action must have a secular purpose; (2)

“its principal or primary effect must be one that neither

advances nor inhibits religion”; and (3) it “must not foster an

excessive government entanglement with religion.” Lemon,

403 U.S. at 612-13 (citations and internal quotation marks

omitted). The School District’s Policy must satisfy all three

prongs of the Lemon test. Under each prong of this test, we

first examine California Education Code § 52720 and the

School District’s Policy and then, because the School District’s Policy states that recitation of the Pledge will suffice,

we also examine the Pledge.

VI. California Education Code § 52720 and the School

District’s Policy Are Constitutional under the Lemon

test.

California Education Code § 52720 states as follows:

In every public elementary school each day during

the school year at the beginning of the first regularly

scheduled class or activity period at which the

majority of the pupils of the school normally begin

the school day, there shall be conducted appropriate

patriotic exercises. The giving of the Pledge of Alle3882 NEWDOW v. RIO LINDA USD

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giance to the Flag of the United States of America

shall satisfy the requirements of this section.

In every public secondary school there shall be conducted daily appropriate patriotic exercises. The giving of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the

United States of America shall satisfy such requirement. Such patriotic exercises for secondary schools

shall be conducted in accordance with the regulations which shall be adopted by the governing board

of the district maintaining the secondary school.

To comply with California Education Code § 52720, the

Rio Linda Union School District adopted the following policy

(“The School District’s Policy”):

Patriotic Exercises

Each school shall conduct patriotic exercises daily.

At elementary schools, such exercises shall be conducted at the beginning of each school day. The

Pledge of Allegiance to the flag will fulfill this

requirement. (Education Code § 52720)

Individuals may choose not to participate in the flag

salute for personal reasons.

[5] All parties agree that the “ostensible and predominant”

purpose of both California Education Code § 52720 and the

School District’s Policy is patriotic. We agree. The plain

wording of California Education Code § 52720 and the

School District’s Policy both express a secular purpose: to

encourage the performance of patriotic exercises in public

school. Not only does the plain wording provide for the students to begin the day with a “patriotic exercise”, but it does

not mandate the text of the Pledge or any other patriotic exercise. The Pledge is one acceptable alternative. Because only

a patriotic exercise is encouraged and no particular text is

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mandated, the California statute and the School District’s policy are neutral toward religion. See Wallace v. Jaffree, 472

U.S. 38, 55 n.37 (1985).

[6] Lemon’s second prong is also met. The effect of California Education Code § 52720 and the School District’s Policy is stated quite clearly in each: each school shall conduct

“appropriate patriotic exercises” daily. There is no mention of

anything religious in either. Further, although the recitation of

the Pledge “shall satisfy” this requirement, it is not mandated

under California law. Schools could decide to have the children learn and recite a different historical document each

week, or participate in another patriotic activity, such as

working on a project to help the nation. Recitation of the

Pledge is just one of many ways to satisfy this patriotic

requirement.

[7] Plaintiffs also concede that Lemon’s third prong, “excessive [governmental] entanglement” with religion, is not

violated by California Education Code § 52720 or the School

District’s Policy, and we agree. Neither involves any entanglement with religion at all, let alone excessive entanglement.

Lemon, 403 U.S. at 612-13.

VII. The Pledge of Allegiance Is Constitutional under

the Lemon test.

Because the School District’s Policy states that recitation of

the Pledge will fulfill the policy, we also examine the Pledge

itself. We begin our analysis with the least controversial elements of the Lemon test in this case.

A. The Pledge does not involve any excessive 

entanglement with religion.

[8] Plaintiffs concede that the Pledge does not violate

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ment” with religion, and we agree. There is no excessive

entanglement with religion. Lemon, 403 U.S. at 612-13.

B. The primary or principal effect of the Pledge is

neither to advance nor inhibit religion.

[9] The Supreme Court has said the Pledge is a “common

public acknowledgment of the ideals that our flag symbolizes.

Its recitation is a patriotic exercise designed to foster national

unity and pride in those principles.” Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at

6. The Pledge also has the permissible secular effect of promoting an appreciation of the values and ideals that define our

nation. The recitation of the Pledge is designed to evoke feelings of patriotism, pride, and love of country, not of divine

fulfillment or spiritual enlightenment. In sum, the students are

simply supporting the nation through their Pledge “to the Flag

of the United States of America and to the Republic for which

it stands.” Thus, the Pledge passes Lemon’s second prong. 

Next, we turn to the hotly contested issue in this case,

whether Congress’ purpose in enacting the Pledge of Allegiance was predominantly patriotic or religious.

C. Congress’ purpose in enacting the Pledge of

Allegiance was patriotic.

Under Lemon’s first prong, governmental action is unconstitutional only if it has the “ostensible and predominant purpose of advancing religion.” McCreary County, 545 U.S. at

860. We must defer to the government’s articulation of a secular purpose, of which patriotism is one; however, the government’s stated purpose must be sincere, not a sham. Edwards

v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 586-87 (1987). 

In 2002, Congress’ purpose in reaffirming the Pledge by

enacting 4 U.S.C. § 4 was predominantly secular. The phrase

“under God”, when read in context with the whole of the

Pledge, has the predominant purpose and effect of adding a

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solemn and inspiring note to what should be a solemn and

inspiring promise—a promise of allegiance to our Republic.

1. We must examine the Pledge as a whole.

When it comes to testing whether words and actions are

violative of the Establishment Clause, context is determinative. The dissent analyzes only the words “under God”,

instead of analyzing the context in which those words appear.9

The Supreme Court has specifically rejected such a limited

analysis: “[the dissenting Justices] would cut context out of

the enquiry, to the point of ignoring history, no matter what

bearing it actually had on the significance of current circumstances. There is no precedent for [their] arguments, or reason

supporting them.” McCreary County, 545 U.S. at 864. Further, “[t]he eyes that look to purpose belong to an ‘objective

observer’ . . . one presumed to be familiar with the history of

the government’s actions and competent to learn what history

has to show.” Id. at 864-66 (quoting Santa Fe Indep. Sch.

Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 308 (2000)).

The dissent suggests that we should look only at the 1954

textual amendments to the Pledge. See Dissent at 3973-78,

3998-99. We disagree. Wallace looked not only to the textual

difference between two statutes, but also to the legislative

record surrounding the second statute, to the statute’s sponsor’s testimony before the district court, and to the informa9The dissent mis-characterizes our analysis on page 3998. It is not the

word “under” upon which we must focus, it is the entire wording of the

Pledge as a whole. If the Pledge were solely: “We are under God’s rule”,

would it make a difference? It would. There would be an argument that

this was nothing more than a prayer. So would the Ten Commandments

be a purely religious symbol if they stood alone in the Texas governmental

park; so would the Nativity Crèche in the Rhode Island Park, if not surrounded by a Christmas tree, Santa and a Menorah. The recognition that

words or symbols change and have different meanings in different contexts is not “pure poppycock”, Dissent at 3998, unless Van Orden and

Donnelly are pure poppycock. 

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tion Governor Wallace supplied in his answer to plaintiff

Jaffree’s complaint, and to the character of a statute on a similar topic passed one year later. Wallace, 472 U.S. at 56-60

(1985). Following Wallace’s holistic approach, we must

examine the relevant history.

[10] “[T]he question is what viewers may fairly understand

to be the purpose of the display. That inquiry, of necessity,

turns upon the context in which the contested object appears.”

McCreary County, 545 U.S. at 867-68 (quoting County of

Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573, 595 (1989)). The California statute and the School District’s Policy provide for recitation of the entire Pledge, not just the two words to which the

plaintiffs and the dissent object. Accordingly, we examine the

Pledge as a whole.

[11] In the previous case brought by Newdow, the

Supreme Court recognized why we pledge allegiance to the

flag:

The very purpose of a national flag is to serve as a

symbol of our country, and of its proud traditions of

freedom, of equal opportunity, of religious tolerance,

and of good will for other peoples who share our

aspirations. As its history illustrates, the Pledge of

Allegiance evolved as a common public acknowledgment of the ideals that our flag symbolizes. Its

recitation is a patriotic exercise designed to foster

national unity and pride in those principles.

Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at 5 (internal citations and quotation

marks omitted).

The Supreme Court has held prayers, invocations and other

overtly religious activities in public school violate the Establishment Clause. A student-led prayer before high school

football games;10 a prayer delivered by a clergyman in a high

10Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290 (2000). 

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school graduation ceremony;11 a period of silence in a public

school for “meditation or voluntary prayer;”

12 a required Bible

reading before each school day;13 and a daily prayer14 all have

been invalidated by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional

school-sponsored religious exercises.

All of the religious exercises invalidated in those cases

shared a fundamental characteristic absent from the recitation

of the Pledge: the exercise, observance, classroom lecture, or

activity was predominantly religious in nature—a prayer,

invocation, petition, or a lecture about “creation science.”

15

11Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992). In Lee, the Court found that a

prayer led by a Rabbi specifically made reference to the Judeo-Christian

tradition, because it was taken from Micah 6:8. See id. at 603 n.5. In the

Pledge, the phrase “one Nation under God” does not make reference to

any text, doctrine, or the practice of any particular religion in a manner

that might be taken as suggestive, let alone coercive. The most likely provenance of the words is from either George Washington’s address to boost

his troops’ morale, the Declaration of Independence, or President’s Lincoln’s tribute to the dead at Gettysburg. George Washington, General

Orders (July 2, 1776); Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (Nov.

19, 1863). See pages 3903 to 3908 infra. 

Much as Justice Brennan explained, the “references to God contained

in the Pledge of Allegiance” are “uniquely suited to serve such wholly secular purposes as solemnizing public occasions, or inspiring commitment

to meet some national challenge in a manner that simply could not be fully

served in our culture if government were limited to purely non-religious

phrases.” Lynch, 465 U.S. at 716-17. 

12Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985). 

13Sch. Dist. of Abington Twp., Pa. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963). 

14Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962). 

15See e.g. Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 306-07 (“[T]he only type of message

that is expressly endorsed in the text [of the school policy] is an

‘invocation’—a term that primarily describes an appeal for divine assistance.”); Lee, 505 U.S. at 581-82, 598 (“[T]he State has . . . compelled

attendance and participation in an explicit religious exercise [involving

repeated thanks to God and requests for blessings] at an event of singular

importance to every student.”); Wallace, 472 U.S. at 58 (“The wholly religious character of the later enactment [of the Alabama statute] is plainly

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[12] The purpose of public prayer is always active—to

invite divine intercession, to express personal gratitude, to ask

forgiveness, etc. On the other hand, the recitation of “one

Nation under God” is a description of the Republic rather than

an expression of the speaker’s particular theological beliefs,

a recognition of the historical principles of governance,

affected by religious belief, embedded in the Pledge. “[Our]

institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” Zorach v. Clausen,

343 U.S. 306, 313 (1952).

The dissent states that the mere recitation of “under God”

in the Pledge is an affirmation that God exists: it “ ‘requires

affirmation of a belief and an attitude of mind’ to which

young Roe does not subscribe: a belief that God exists and is

watching over our nation.” Dissent at 3975 (quoting W. Va.

State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 633 (1943)). If

in fact the students were required to say the Pledge, the dissent would have a valid point. But the California legislature

has already taken this consideration into account by allowing

anyone not to say the Pledge, or hear the Pledge said, for any

personal reason. What is at issue is not saying the Pledge or

affirming a belief in God. What is at issue is whether

Roechild can prevent other students, who have no such objection, from saying the Pledge.

[13] In contending the Pledge is an unconstitutional religious exercise, plaintiffs erroneously fixate solely on the

evident from its text.”); Edwards, 482 U.S. at 589 (striking down a Louisiana statute that had the “purpose of discrediting ‘ “evolution by counterbalancing its teaching at every turn with the teaching of creationism’ ”);

Schempp, 374 U.S. at 210 (“The reading of the [Bible] verses, even without comment, possesses a devotional and religious character and constitutes in effect a religious observance.” (citation and internal quotation

marks omitted)); Engel, 370 U.S. at 424 (“There can, of course, be no

doubt that New York’s program of daily classroom invocation of God’s

blessings as prescribed in the Regents’ prayer is a religious activity. It is

a solemn avowal of divine faith and supplication for the blessings of the

Almighty.”).

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words “under God” and disregard the context in which those

words appear. True, the words “under God” have religious

significance. This, however, does not convert the Pledge into

a prayer or other religious exercise. As the Supreme Court has

explained, “Focus exclusively on the religious component of

any activity would inevitably lead to its invalidation under the

Establishment Clause.” Lynch, 465 U.S. at 680. Under the dissent’s rationale, every government action that had any religious component to it would violate the Establishment

Clause. But that is clearly not the case, as the Supreme Court

has repeatedly told us. See also discussion at pages 3875-76

supra.

Where the very same religious symbols are displayed for

traditional cultural purposes and in a context evoking themes

and values other than religion, they have been found not to

violate the Establishment Clause. See Van Orden v. Perry,

545 U.S. 677, 681 (2005) (upholding a Ten Commandments

display on state capitol grounds among other historical monuments); Lynch, 465 U.S. at 670-71, 680, 687 (upholding a

crèche displayed as just one part of a city’s annual Christmas

display because the crèche depicted the “historical origins of

this traditional event long recognized as a National Holiday”).

The Supreme Court’s most recent pronouncements on the

Establishment Clause, Van Orden and McCreary County, are

instructive on the importance of context. Van Orden and

McCreary County were decided on the same day in 2005.

Although a display containing the Ten Commandments was

at issue in both cases, the Court upheld the display in Van

Orden, but invalidated it in McCreary County. The words displayed were the same, but the context made all the difference:

On the one hand, the Commandments’ text undeniably has a religious message, invoking, indeed

emphasizing, the Deity. On the other hand, focusing

on the text of the Commandments alone cannot conclusively resolve this case. Rather, to determine the

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message that the text here conveys, we must examine how the text is used. And that inquiry requires us

to consider the context of the display.

Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 700-01 (Breyer, J., concurring)

(emphasis in original). 

The Ten Commandments display in Van Orden was in a

state park that contained both religious and secular monuments and historical markers. Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 681. In

contrast, the Ten Commandments display in a Kentucky

courthouse appeared alone and thus the “unstinting focus was

on religious passages.” McCreary County, 545 U.S. at 870.

Only after the display was challenged did the County add

other displays to the area. Id. As we discuss, infra at page

3896, fn. 19, the 2002 Act is distinguishable from the actions

of McCreary County.

Just as the text of the Ten Commandments display may be

constitutional in one context but not the other, the word

“God” may violate the Establishment Clause when placed in

one context, but not another. For example, a school district’s

policy requiring teachers to lead students in reciting, “We

give thanks to You, Lord, for keeping us alive, sustaining us

and allowing us to reach this special, happy occasion,” constitutes a prayer or religious exercise violative of the Establishment Clause. Lee, 505 U.S. at 582 (citation and internal

quotation marks omitted). There, the word “Lord,” like the

Ten Commandments display in McCreary County, is placed

in a wholly religious context and is surrounded by words

whose “unstinting focus” are religious. Not so, the same word

“Lord” on the granite monument in Van Orden, surrounded

by other monuments and historical objects.16 Likewise, the

16The text of the Ten Commandments display in Van Orden was far

more religious than the phrase “under God” at issue here: 

I AM the LORD thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before

me. 

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phrase “one Nation under God” in the Pledge appears as part

of a pledge of allegiance to “the Flag of the United States of

America, and to the Republic for which it stands,” not a personal pledge of allegiance to God. The Pledge recitation is led

by a teacher, not by a clergyman or other religious leader. Cf.

Lee, 505 U.S. at 586, 587. The students doff baseball caps;

they do not kneel, nor don yarmulkes, veils or rosaries. The

Pledge is thus distinguishable from the school-sponsored

prayers invalidated by the Supreme Court in Lee and Wallace.

Nevertheless, the dissent would have us ignore the wording

of the Pledge as a whole to focus only on one portion of the

Pledge, the portion plaintiffs find objectionable, because in

Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985), the Court examined

an amendment to a statute to provide for prayer. We must disagree with the dissent as to its application of Wallace to this

case. In Wallace, the parents of public school children challenged an amendment to a state statute which had provided

for a moment of silence at the beginning of each day in the

public schools. The challenged amendment changed the purpose of the moment of silence from “meditation” to “meditaThou shalt not make to thyself any graven images. 

Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain. 

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 

Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon

the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 

Thou shalt not kill. 

Thou shalt not commit adultery. 

Thou shalt not steal. 

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house. Thou shalt not covet

thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor

his cattle, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s. 

Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 707 (Stevens, J., dissenting). 

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tion or voluntary prayer.” Id. at 58-59 (emphasis added); Ala.

Code § 16-1-20.1 (1984). This statute was enacted the year

before another statute, Alabama Code § 16-1-20.2, which provided the text of a prayer to be said each day by the students.17

This combination of “voluntary prayer” and the suggested

prayer to be said out loud left no doubt that the purpose of the

statute was to promote religion. 

Focusing, as we must, on how the text of the statute is used,

Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 701 (Breyer, J., concurring), we see

that the addition of “or voluntary prayer” to the statute in

Wallace was used to encourage students to participate in a

religious exercise—the very prayer enacted in Alabama Code

§ 16-1-20.2. Here, the addition of “under God” was used to

describe an attribute of the Republic, “one Nation under God”

—a reference to the historical and religious traditions of our

country, not a personal affirmation through prayer or invocation that the speaker believes in God.

17Alabama Code § 16-1-20.2 provided: 

From henceforth, any teacher or professor in any public educational institution within the state of Alabama, recognizing that the

Lord God is one, at the beginning of any homeroom or any class,

may pray, may lead willing students in prayer, or may lead the

willing students in the following prayer to God: 

Almighty God, You alone are our God. We acknowledge You as

the Creator and Supreme Judge of the world. May Your justice,

Your truth, and Your peace abound this day in the hearts of our

countrymen, in the counsels of our government, in the sanctity of

our homes and in the classrooms of our schools in the name of

our Lord. Amen. 

Wallace v. Jaffree, 466 U.S. 924 (1984) (holding Ala. Code § 16-1-20.2

violates the Establishment Clause). 

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2. The legislative history shows Congress had a

predominantly patriotic purpose when it enacted the

Pledge.

Lemon mandates our inquiry look to the “plain meaning of

the statute’s words, enlightened by their context and the contemporaneous legislative history [and] the historical context

of the statute, . . . and the specific sequence of events leading

to [its] passage.” McCreary County, 545 U.S. at 862 (quoting

from Edwards, 482 U.S. at 594-95) (alteration in original).

The dissent fails to do any of this.

[14] In 2002, Congress reaffirmed the current Pledge,

which now includes references to how it is to be recited and

which specifically sets forth Congress’ reasons for the “plain

meaning of the statute’s words.” See Pub. L. No. 107-293,

116 Stat. 2057 (codified as amended in 4 U.S.C. § 4, 36

U.S.C. § 302) (effective November 13, 2002). It is the 2002

statute—4 U.S.C. § 4—that sets forth our current Pledge. It is

the contemporaneous legislative history of the 2002 Act

which should tell us the purpose of the Congress in 2002 that

is relevant to our inquiry because that is the statute that was

in force when Roe Child-2 heard her schoolmates recite the

Pledge and when Jan Roe brought this action. It remains the

current statute. It is the “specific sequence of events” leading

to the passage of the 2002 Act we must consider.18

18The Dissent asserts that we should ignore the current statute in effect

because it was not argued by the parties at oral argument. With respect,

just because the Dissent does not like the 2002 Act does not mean we are

free to ignore its legal effect. We are charged with conducting a correct

legal analysis of this case whether the parties on appeal do or not. Indeed,

often issues that are not discussed at oral argument are determinative of

the case. For instance, prudential standing was not argued during the oral

argument in this court in Newdow I, nor did this court hold further arguments before issuing Newdow III but the Supreme Court nevertheless certainly found prudential standing to be the determinative issue in Elk

Grove. 542 U.S. at 6. 

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In determining Congress’ purpose under the Lemon test,

“[t]he starting point in every case involving construction of a

statute is the language itself.” Edwards, 482 U.S. at 597-98

(quoting Blue Chip Stamps v. Manor Drug Stores, 421 U.S.

723, 756 (1975) (Powell, J., concurring)). The primary flaw

in the dissent’s reasoning is that, because the secular reasons

given directly in the statute do not lead to the dissent’s desired

result, the dissent ignores those reasons and instead focuses

on the statements of individual legislators making statements

in an election year. The Supreme Court has been very clear

that we are not to do this:

As an initial matter, the [text of the statute] is a sufficient basis for meeting the secular purpose prong of

the Lemon test. See Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S.

578, 586 (1987) ([The] Court “is normally deferential to a [legislative] articulation of a secular purpose”); Mueller v. Allen, 463 U.S. 388, 394-95

(1983) ([The] Court is “reluctan[t] to attribute

unconstitutional motives to the States, particularly

when a plausible secular purpose for the State’s program may be discerned from the face of the statute”).

. . . Even if some legislators were motivated by a

conviction that religious speech in particular was

valuable and worthy of protection, that alone would

not invalidate the Act, because what is relevant is the

legislative purpose of the statute, not the possibly

religious motives of the legislators who enacted the

law.

Bd. of Educ. of Westside Comm. Sch. v. Mergens, 496 U.S.

226, 248-49 (1990) (emphasis added).

With the 2002 Act, Congress “reaffirmed the exact language that has appeared in the Pledge for decades.” See Pub.

L. No. 107-293, 116 Stat. 2057 at 2060 (codified as amended

in 4 U.S.C. § 4, 36 U.S.C. § 302) (effective November 13,

2002). McCreary County tells us we must also consider the

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legislative history of this act to determine its predominant

purpose and effect.19

Congress chose to explain in great detail its purpose in reaffirming the language of the Pledge, for although it did not

amend the text of the Pledge, it did extensively amend the text

of the statute enacting the Pledge, setting forth its specific

purposes in the following extensive legislative findings:20

Congress finds the following:

(1) On November 11, 1620, prior to embarking for

the shores of America, the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact that declared: “Having undertaken,

for the Glory of God and the advancement of the

Christian Faith and honor of our King and country,

a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern

parts of Virginia,”.

(2) On July 4, 1776, America’s Founding Fathers,

after appealing to the “Laws of Nature, and of

19The reenactment of the Pledge here is distinguishable from the actions

of the county in McCreary County for several key reasons. First and foremost, in McCreary County it was the same governmental body which put

up the challenged display, containing as “unstinting focus” on “religious

passages”, that then added secular documents to camouflage that display

only after an Establishment Clause challenge was brought. Here, Congress

thought the Pledge as amended in 1954 was constitutional for 48 years. It

re-enacted the text only because it thought that this court had misinterpreted its original purpose. Further, only one member of Congress,

Senator Byrd, served in both the 1954 and 2002 Congresses. Further,

unlike the late-blooming additions to the display in McCreary County, the

2002 Legislature did not add any further secular content to the Pledge to

dilute the challenged words. 

20We presume the 2002 Legislature’s purpose is as stated, and is not a

sham, because the 2002 Legislature has given us no reason to presume its

stated reasons are not in fact its real reasons for the enactment. See

Edwards, 482 U.S. at 586-87. The plaintiffs have not carried their burden

to show otherwise. 

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Nature’s God” to justify their separation from Great

Britain, then declared: “We hold these Truths to be

self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they

are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and

the Pursuit of Happiness”.

(3) In 1781, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the

Declaration of Independence and later the Nation’s

third President, in his work titled “Notes on the State

of Virginia” wrote: “God who gave us life gave us

liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought

secure when we have removed their only firm basis,

a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God. That they are not to be

violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for

my country when I reflect that God is just; that his

justice cannot sleep forever.”.

(4) On May 14, 1787, George Washington, as

President of the Constitutional Convention, rose to

admonish and exhort the delegates and declared: “If

to please the people we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work?

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the

honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God!”.

(5) On July 21, 1789, on the same day that it

approved the Establishment Clause concerning religion, the First Congress of the United States also

passed the Northwest Ordinance, providing for a territorial government for lands northwest of the Ohio

River, which declared: “Religion, morality, and

knowledge, being necessary to good government and

the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of

education shall forever be encouraged.”.

(6) On September 25, 1789, the First Congress

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dent George Washington to proclaim a National Day

of Thanksgiving for the people of the United States

by declaring, “a day of public thanksgiving and

prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with

grateful hearts, the many signal favors of Almighty

God, especially by affording them an opportunity

peaceably to establish a constitution of government

for their safety and happiness.”.

(7) On November 19, 1863, President Abraham

Lincoln delivered his Gettysburg Address on the site

of the battle and declared: “It is rather for us to be

here dedicated to the great task remaining before us

—that from these honored dead we take increased

devotion to that cause for which they gave the last

full measure of devotion—that we here highly

resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—

that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth

of freedom—and that Government of the people, by

the people, for the people, shall not perish from the

earth.”.

(8) On April 28, 1952, in the decision of the

Supreme Court of the United States in Zorach v.

Clauson, 343 U.S. 306 (1952), in which school children were allowed to be excused from public schools

for religious observances and education, Justice William O. Douglas, in writing for the Court stated:

“The First Amendment, however, does not say that

in every and all respects there shall be a separation

of Church and State. Rather, it studiously defines the

manner, the specific ways, in which there shall be no

concern or union or dependency one on the other.

That is the common sense of the matter. Otherwise

the State and religion would be aliens to each other

—hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly. Churches

could not be required to pay even property taxes.

Municipalities would not be permitted to render

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police or fire protection to religious groups. Policemen who helped parishioners into their places of

worship would violate the Constitution. Prayers in

our legislative halls; the appeals to the Almighty in

the messages of the Chief Executive; the proclamations making Thanksgiving Day a holiday; ‘so help

me God’ in our courtroom oaths—these and all other

references to the Almighty that run through our laws,

our public rituals, our ceremonies would be flouting

the First Amendment. A fastidious atheist or agnostic could even object to the supplication with which

the Court opens each session: ‘God save the United

States and this Honorable Court.’ ”.

(9) On June 15, 1954, Congress passed and President Eisenhower signed into law a statute that was

clearly consistent with the text and intent of the Constitution of the United States, that amended the

Pledge of Allegiance to read: “I pledge allegiance to

the Flag of the United States of America and to the

Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”.

(10) On July 20, 1956, Congress proclaimed that

the national motto of the United States is “In God

We Trust”, and that motto is inscribed above the

main door of the Senate, behind the Chair of the

Speaker of the House of Representatives, and on the

currency of the United States.

(11) On June 17, 1963, in the decision of the

Supreme Court of the United States in Abington

School District v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963), in

which compulsory school prayer was held unconstitutional, Justices Goldberg and Harlan, concurring in

the decision, stated: “But untutored devotion to the

concept of neutrality can lead to invocation or

approval of results which partake not simply of that

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noninterference and noninvolvement with the religious which the Constitution commands, but of a

brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and

a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious.

Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.

Neither government nor this Court can or should

ignore the significance of the fact that a vast portion

of our people believe in and worship God and that

many of our legal, political, and personal values

derive historically from religious teachings. Government must inevitably take cognizance of the existence of religion and, indeed, under certain

circumstances the First Amendment may require that

it do so.”.

(12) On March 5, 1984, in the decision of the

Supreme Court of the United States in Lynch v.

Donelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), in which a city government’s display of a nativity scene was held to be

constitutional, Chief Justice Burger, writing for the

Court, stated: “There is an unbroken history of official acknowledgment by all three branches of government of the role of religion in American life from

at least 1789 . . . [E]xamples of reference to our religious heritage are found in the statutorily prescribed

national motto ‘In God We Trust’ (36 U.S.C. 186),

which Congress and the President mandated for our

currency, see (31 U.S.C. 5112(d)(1) (1982 ed.)), and

in the language ‘One Nation under God’, as part of

the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag. That

pledge is recited by many thousands of public school

children—and adults—every year . . . Art galleries

supported by public revenues display religious paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries, predominantly

inspired by one religious faith. The National Gallery

in Washington, maintained with Government support, for example, has long exhibited masterpieces

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with religious messages, notably the Last Supper,

and paintings depicting the Birth of Christ, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection, among many others

with explicit Christian themes and messages. The

very chamber in which oral arguments on this case

were heard is decorated with a notable and

permanent—not seasonal—symbol of religion:

Moses with the Ten Commandments. Congress has

long provided chapels in the Capitol for religious

worship and meditation.”.

(13) On June 4, 1985, in the decision of the

Supreme Court of the United States in Wallace v.

Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985), in which a mandatory

moment of silence to be used for meditation or voluntary prayer was held unconstitutional, Justice

O’Connor, concurring in the judgment and addressing the contention that the Court’s holding would

render the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional

because Congress amended it in 1954 to add the

words “under God,” stated “In my view, the words

‘under God’ in the Pledge, as codified at (36 U.S.C.

172), serve as an acknowledgment of religion with

‘the legitimate secular purposes of solemnizing public occasions, [and] expressing confidence in the

future.’ ”.

(14) On November 20, 1992, the United States

Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, in Sherman v.

Community Consolidated School District 21, 980

F.2d 437 (7th Cir. 1992), held that a school district’s

policy for voluntary recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance including the words “under God” was constitutional.

(15) The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals erroneously

held, in Newdow v. U.S. Congress (9th Cir. June 26,

2002), that the Pledge of Allegiance’s use of the

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express religious reference “under God” violates the

First Amendment to the Constitution, and that, therefore, a school district’s policy and practice of

teacher-led voluntary recitations of the Pledge of

Allegiance is unconstitutional.

(16) The erroneous rationale of the 9th Circuit

Court of Appeals in Newdow would lead to the

absurd result that the Constitution’s use of the

express religious reference “Year of our Lord” in

Article VII violates the First Amendment to the Constitution, and that, therefore, a school district’s policy and practice of teacher-led voluntary recitations

of the Constitution itself would be unconstitutional.

4 U.S.C. § 4 (2002).

[15] These findings make it absolutely clear that Congress

in 2002 was not trying to impress a religious doctrine upon

anyone. Rather, they had two main purposes for keeping the

phrase “one Nation under God” in the Pledge: (1) to underscore the political philosophy of the Founding Fathers that

God granted certain inalienable rights to the people which the

government cannot take away; and (2) to add the note of

importance which a Pledge to our Nation ought to have and

which in our culture ceremonial references to God arouse. 

The dissent contends that we must ignore the 2002 reaffirmation in its entirety. See Dissent at 3973-78. But the

Supreme Court has rejected this mode of analysis. Again,

“[t]he eyes that look to purpose belong to an objective

observer . . . competent to learn what history has to show,”

McCreary County, 545 U.S. at 862-66 (quotations and citations removed), and our observer’s competence will not suddenly fail her when she is presented with the most recent

legislative history of 4 U.S.C. § 4.

Even if the dissent were correct that the focus of our

inquiry should be the 1954 amendments to the text of the

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Pledge, Wallace makes clear that the 2002 reaffirmation

would still be relevant. In Wallace, the Court determined

whether a school prayer statute had a secular purpose by looking at, among other things, the “character” of a subsequent

statute, passed a year later, which the Court described as a

“sequel” to the statute at issue. Wallace, 472 U.S. at 58.

Determining the purpose of the Pledge requires understanding

the history of the Pledge, and any such history is incomplete

without the 2002 reaffirmation.

3. History supports Congress’ view of the Pledge.

[16] Not only must we examine the words “under God” in

the context of the rest of the Pledge, we must also examine

them in the context of history. Without knowing the history

behind these words, one might well think the phrase “one

Nation under God” could not be anything but religious. History, however, shows these words have an even broader

meaning, one grounded in philosophy and politics and reflecting many events of historical significance.

The words “under God” were added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 in response to the oppressive governments

forming around the World. Congress wanted to emphasize

that in America, the government’s power is limited by a

higher power. But to understand this concept, we must look

back to the beginning of our nation.

Among the “self-evident truths” the Framers believed was

the concept that all people are entitled to certain inalienable

rights given to them by the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s

God” and that the purpose of government should be “to secure

these rights.” In the monarchies of Europe, it was believed

that God gave the King his power, and the people had only

such limited rights as the King graciously bestowed upon

them. When drafting the Establishment and Free Exercise

Clauses of the First Amendment, the Founders had this religious history of Europe in mind: 

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[T]o the men who wrote the Religion Clauses of the

First Amendment the ‘establishment’ of a religion

connoted sponsorship, financial support, and active

involvement of the sovereign in religious activity. In

England, and in some Colonies at the time of the

separation in 1776, the Church of England was sponsored and supported by the Crown as a state, or

established, church; in other countries ‘establishment’ meant sponsorship by the sovereign of the

Lutheran or Catholic Church. See Engel v. Vitale,

370 U.S., at 428 n. 10, 82 S. Ct., at 1265. See generally C. Antieau, A. Downey, & E. Roberts, Freedom

from Federal Establishment (1964). The exclusivity

of established churches in the 17th and 18th centuries, of course, was often carried to prohibition of

other forms of worship.

Walz v. Tax Comm’n, 397 U.S. 664, 667 (1970); see also

Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. at 8-11 (“A large proportion

of the early settlers of this country came here from Europe to

escape the bondage of laws which compelled them to support

and attend government favored churches. The centuries

immediately before and contemporaneous with the colonization of America had been filled with turmoil, civil strife, and

persecutions, generated in large part by established sects

determined to maintain their absolute political and religious

supremacy. . . . In efforts to force loyalty to whatever religious group happened to be on top and in league with the government of a particular time and place, men and women had

been fined, cast in jail, cruelly tortured, and killed.”).

In contrast, the Framers believed that God endowed people

with certain inalienable rights, rights no government could

take away and no church could regulate. These rights were

inalienable by the government because they were derived

from a source more powerful than, and entitled to more

respect than, the government—even a democratically elected

government. The government could regulate only those rights

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the people gave to the government. This fundamental debate

—whether government has only limited rights given to it by

the people, or whether the people have only limited rights

given to them by the government—remains one of the crucial

debates around the world to this day. Whether government is

limited or unlimited has a profound impact on people’s dayto-day lives. For instance, if the police arrest an individual, in

many countries, the only question is whether there is a law

forbidding the arrest. If there is no such law, the arrest is legal

because the government is all powerful and not to be questioned. In America, the question is what law allows the police

to arrest the person. If there is no such law, then the arrest is

unlawful and the person can petition the courts to be released

because the government has only such power as the people

have chosen to give it through their elected representatives.

In 1776, limited government was a rare concept. If the new

government of this nation would have only limited powers,

what authority limited these powers? If the people would

retain certain rights that did not emanate from the government, whence came those rights? The Framers referred to the

source of the people’s rights as the “Creator,” the “Supreme

Judge,” and “Nature’s God.” The Declaration of Independence, 1 U.S.C. § XLIII (1776). The name given to this

unknowable, varied source was not crucial, but the source was

a necessary prerequisite to the concept of limited government

that formed the basis of our nation’s founding.21

21After the Revolutionary War, a committee consisting of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and later Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth drafted

an “Address to the States, by the United States in Congress Assembled.”

According to the Address, the Revolutionary War was won for the rights

of human nature, rights that had an “Author”: 

Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the pride and

boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the

rights of human nature. By the blessings of the Author of these

rights on the means exerted for their deference, they have prevailed against all opposition, and form the basis of thirteen independent States. 

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Long before this nation could be founded, the Framers had

to convince the people in the American colonies that their

individual rights were important enough to start a war. Important enough to die for. Important enough to send their sons to

die for. We must remember the Framers urged a rationale for

committing treason against Great Britain. For this, they

needed to draw upon every weapon in their intellectual arsenal. They needed to call upon divine inspiration, as so many

armies before them had.22

Alexander Hamilton argued in February 1775, “The sacred

rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old

parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of

the Divinity himself, and can never be erased or obscured by

mortal power.” Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted

(1775).

And so when the Second Continental Congress of the

United States met on July 4, 1776, the original thirteen states

sought to convince not only the Colonists, but also the world

William Hickey, The Constitution of the United States of America 139-40

(1853) (emphasis added), cited in Anthony R. Picarello, Jr., Establishing

Anti-Foundationalism Through the Pledge of Allegiance Cases, 5 First

Amend. L. Rev. 183, 188 (2006) (filed as part of the brief for DefendantIntervenor Carey). 

22In his General Orders, George Washington invoked the phrase “under

God” to inspire his troops when describing the fate of America if the King

of Great Britain, with his unlimited powers, should win the Revolutionary

War: 

The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the

Courage and Conduct of this army—Our cruel and unrelenting

Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most

abject submission; this is all we can expect—We have therefore

to resolve to conquer or die. 

George Washington, General Orders (July 2, 1776) (emphasis added),

cited in Picarello, 5 First Amend. L. Rev. at 187. 

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that a higher power granted rights directly to the people, who

would in turn grant only limited powers to their new government:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes

necessary for one people to dissolve the political

bands which have connected them with another, and

to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature

and of Nature’s God entitle them,23 a decent respect

to the opinions of mankind requires that they should

declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men

are created equal, that they are endowed by their

Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among

these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence, 1 U.S.C. § XLIII (1776)

(emphasis added).

“The Declaration of Independence was the promise; the

Constitution was the fulfillment.”

24 The Constitution fulfilled

the promise of the Declaration by creating a government of

limited powers. The government was divided into three coequal but separate branches that would check and balance one

another to ensure the government remained limited, and the

people’s rights secure. 

23Here, Jefferson was referring to Cicero’s concept that “God himself”

was the author, promulgator, and enforcer of the “universal law of justice.” Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Republica III, xxii. Cicero, who lived

from 106 BC to 43 BC, obviously was not a Christian. Thus, this concept

of God and Nature bestowing rights upon the people is not confined to the

traditions of Christianity, regardless of some of the proclamations of

preachers and Congressmen in 1954. 

24Charles Alan Wright, Warren Burger: A Young Friend Remembers,

74 Tex. L. Rev. 213, 219 (1995) (quoting Chief Justice Warren Burger).

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While the Revolutionary War was waged against the abusive King of Great Britain, the Civil War was waged against

abusive State governments.25 Many abolitionists asserted that

slaves were also endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights that could not be taken away by the government.

During his Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln

called upon this higher power, using the very same phrase—

”nation, under God”—to describe a belief in equality and limited government:

[T]he great task remaining before us—that from

these honored dead we take increased devotion to

that cause for which they gave the last full measure

of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these

dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation,

under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and

that government of the people, by the people, for the

people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address (Nov. 19, 1863)

(emphasis added).

The original Pledge of Allegiance was drafted by Frances

Bellamy in 1892: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the

Republic for which it stands: one Nation indivisible,26 with

Liberty and Justice for all.” Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v.

Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 6 (2004). It was published in a national

youth magazine commemorating the 400th anniversary of

Christopher Columbus’ arrival in America. Id. 

25Following the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was added, to

limit the power of the States as against the rights of the people. In particular, the Fourteenth Amendment was necessary to guard against states disregarding the prohibition against slavery found in the Thirteenth

Amendment. 

26Reinforcement of the idea that this nation is indivisible, a concept

most Americans today would not even think was up for debate, reflects the

fact that the Pledge was first drafted in 1892, not long after the Civil War.

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During World War II, Congress formally codified the

Pledge of Allegiance. Unlike Bellamy’s version, the 1942

Pledge referred expressly to the United States of America

because there was a worry that a Pledge to “my Flag” would

allow those who sympathized with other nations to appear to

be supporting America, while secretly supporting Germany,

Japan, or the like: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the

United States of America and to the Republic for which it

stands, one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Id. (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Pub. L.

No. 623, Ch. 435, § 7, 56 Stat. 380 (1942) (codified at 36

U.S.C. § 1972, now repealed).

In the early 1950s America became involved in the war

waged between North and South Korea. North Korea was

aided by the communist regimes of the Soviet Union and

China, while South Korea was aided by the United Nations,

including the United States, Australia, and Great Britain. This

was just one of many times when the West opposed the

spread of communism. American soldiers had just fought and

died in this war, not returning until after the cease fire in July

1953. Encyclopedia Britannica Online Ed. available at http://

search.eb.com/eb/article-9046072 (last visited August 4,

2009). Indeed, America still has troops in South Korea. The

tensions over the differences in political systems continue

today. Id. It was while the scars of the Korean War were still

fresh that Congress decided to amend the Pledge again.

[17] In 1954, during the escalating Cold War with North

Korea, the Soviet Union and other communist countries, Congress further amended the Pledge by changing the phrase “one

Nation indivisible” to “one Nation under God, indivisible.”

Pub. L. No. 396, Ch. 297, 68 Stat. 249 (1954). The words

“under God” were added as a description of “one Nation” primarily to reinforce the idea that our nation is founded upon

the concept of a limited government, in stark contrast to the

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gress reinforced the belief that our nation was one of

individual liberties granted to the people directly by a higher

power:

At this moment of our history the principles underlying our American Government and the American

way of life are under attack by a system whose philosophy is at direct odds with our own. [O]ur American Government is founded on the concept of the

individuality and the dignity of the human being.

Underlying this concept is the belief that the human

person is important because he was created by God

and endowed by Him with certain inalienable rights

which no civil authority may usurp. 

H.R. Rep. No. 83-1693, 1954 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2339, 2340 (May

28, 1954). The House Report adopted this statement from

Representative Rabaut:

By the addition of the phrase ‘under God’ to the

pledge, the consciousness of the American people

will be more alerted to the true meaning of our country and its form of government. In this full awareness

we will, I believe, be strengthened for the conflict

now facing us and more determined to preserve our

precious heritage. 

More importantly, the children of our land, in the

daily recitation of the pledge in school, will be daily

impressed with a true understanding of our way of

life and its origins. As they grow and advance in this

understanding, they will assume the responsibilities

of self-government equipped to carry on the traditions that have been given to us.

Id. at 2341.27

27The dissent appears to think the historical context for the Pledge

extends back no more than to the Sunday when Reverend Docherty gave

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Undoubtedly, as the dissent sets forth in great detail, some

members of Congress sought to promote religion and to combat atheism. We do not dispute that those motives do not comport with the First Amendment. Where the dissent errs,

however, is in focusing solely on what individuals say when

they are making political statements to their constituencies

and ending its analysis there instead of also looking at what

Congress did when it enacted and amended the Pledge over

time. The dissent ignores the plain language of the 2002 Act

—the only evidence we have of what an overwhelming

majority of both houses of Congress voted for.28 Why does the

dissent ignore the language in the statute that Congress voted

for? Because the Congressional findings set forth in the statute do not lead to the result the dissent desires. The dissent

his sermon. With respect, Reverend Docherty was never elected to office

and, though he may indeed have delivered a moving sermon, the concept

of this nation being “one Nation under God” extended back long before

his time, at least to General Washington’s address to his troops in 1776

and to President Lincoln’s Gettysburg address in 1863. George Washington, General Orders (July 2, 1776); Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg

Address (Nov. 19, 1863). 

We do not doubt some members of Congress were motivated to add the

phrase “under God” to the Pledge to serve wholly religious ends. Nevertheless, under Supreme Court precedent, our Establishment Clause inquiry

focuses solely on “the legislative purpose of the statute, not the possibly

religious motives of the legislators who enacted the law.” Bd. of Educ. v.

Mergens, 496 U.S. 226, 249 (1990) (plurality opinion of O’Connor, J.);

see United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 384 (1968) (“What motivates

one legislator to make a speech about a statute is not necessarily what

motivates scores of others to enact it.”). 

28The Senate passed the 2002 Act with 99 Yeahs and 1 member not voting. For the Senate vote, see http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/

roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=107&session=2&vote=

00166 (last visited January 15, 2010). 

The House passed the Act with a vote of 401 Yeahs; 5 Nays; 4 members

present; and 21 members not voting. For the House vote, see http://

thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?r107:36:./temp/r10777QQHb:: (last visited January 15, 2010). 

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also ignores the inescapable fact that it is the 2002 Act that

is in effect today. 

The dissent points to instances where individual Congressmen proclaimed, as politicians often do in election years, the

obvious religious elements of the amendment. But we are called upon to discern Congress’ ostensible and predominant

purpose, not the purpose of an individual. See McCreary

County, 545 U.S. at 867-68. That purpose is not the statement

of one or more individual members of Congress, but what the

committees putting forth the amendment actually stated and,

more important, what the text of the statute says. Id.; Mergens, 496 U.S. at 248-49.

One related point is important. The dissent attributes one

meaning to the words “under God” and proclaims that is the

end of the inquiry. We are called upon to discern Congress’

purpose. We first stated what we thought the purpose of the

words was in Newdow III. Congress thought we misinterpreted its purpose. See page 3903 supra. Thus, Congress set

forth its reasons in detail in the 2002 Act. 

Another related point is that:

It cannot be the case that Congress may override a

constitutional decision by simply rewriting the history upon which it is based. For instance, Congress

surely cannot negate the effect of a Fourth Amendment decision by penning its own account of the

scope of lawful searches at the time of the Founding.

Cf. Florida v. White, 526 U.S. 559, 563-64 (1999)

(“In deciding whether a challenged governmental

action violates the [Fourth] Amendment, we have

taken care to inquire whether the action was

regarded as an unlawful search and seizure when the

Amendment was framed.”).

United States v. Enas, 255 F.3d 662, 675 (9th Cir. 2001) (en

banc). This principle applies when Congress is trying to re3912 NEWDOW v. RIO LINDA USD

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write history, not when Congress is trying to clarify our misunderstanding of its own purpose in enacting a statute. The

2002 Congress made it clear that we had misunderstood Congress’ purpose in our ruling in Newdow III. It was thus perfectly appropriate for a different Congress to clarify its

present purpose for us by setting forth its reasons in detail in

the 2002 Act. And given the margins by which the 2002 Act

passed, it is clear that virtually all of the members of Congress

agreed we had misinterpreted the purpose of the words “under

God.”

The dissent calls the 2002 Congress’ purpose a sham but

does not point to even one place where Congress is incorrect

in its recitation of history. The dissent disregards the fact that

the Supreme Court has also recognized that the Founders’

religious beliefs are a part of our nation’s history. “The fact

that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was

a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in

Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself.” Schempp, 374 U.S.

213.

Further, it makes sense that we must examine the purpose

of the most recent Congressional enactment, since under the

Lemon test we are required to examine purpose.29 Otherwise,

29One can certainly question the wisdom of trying to discern a legislature’s unitary purpose and whether that purpose, even if it can be discerned, should be a part of the relevant test for Establishment Clause

claims. First, it is difficult if not impossible to say that members of a Congress act with one purpose. Second, litigants challenging a governmental

action do not tend to care about the government’s purpose as much as the

effect the governmental action has on their lives. Third, concentrating on

the purpose can lead to either striking down a facially secular action that

had a religious purpose, or upholding an action with religious content

where the legislature was careful to set forth a secular purpose. Although

both are remote possibilities because the Lemon test has three parts and

does not focus solely on legislative purpose, both possibilities highlight

the potential pitfalls of including purpose in the analysis. Nevertheless, as

long as we are constrained by the Lemon test, we must attempt to examine

the purpose of the legislature that enacted the statute in issue, which in this

case is the 2002 statute. 

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a perfectly valid measure, with a predominantly secular effect,

as is the Pledge, would forever be banned by the politically

motivated statements of some legislators (or even someone

who is not in the legislature, like Reverend Docherty). The

dissent’s analysis would grant a heckler’s veto to anyone who

made just enough noise in support of an enactment so as to

defeat an otherwise valid measure. That is not the law.

4. Secular purposes that have a religious component to

them can be constitutional.

That certain enactments can have both secular and religious

purposes and still be constitutional has been recognized by the

Supreme Court. “A religious purpose alone is not enough to

invalidate an act of a state legislature. The religious purpose

must predominate.”

30 Edwards, 482 U.S. at 598 (Powell, J.,

concurring). See also McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420,

442 (1961) (“[T]he ‘Establishment’ Clause does not ban federal or state regulation of conduct whose reason or effect

merely happens to coincide or harmonize with the tenets of

some or all religions. In many instances, the Congress or state

legislatures conclude that the general welfare of society,

wholly apart from any religious considerations, demands such

regulation . . . . [T]he fact that [a policy] agrees with the dictates of the Judeo Christian religions while it may disagree

with others does not invalidate the regulation.”). 

We must be “reluctant to attribute unconstitutional

motives” to Congress when the stated purpose of the statute

is a plausible secular purpose. Mueller v. Allen, 463 U.S. 388,

394-95 (1983). Both the purposes of inspiring and solemniz30Webster’s defines predominant as: 

1. having ascendancy, power, authority, or influence over others; preeminent. 

2. preponderant; prominent: a predominant trait; the predominant color of a painting. See http://dictionary.reference.com/

browse/predominant (last visited January 20, 2010). 

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ing do have a religious element to them. Nevertheless, that

does not make them predominantly religious in nature. The

Supreme Court has recognized that sometimes a statute has a

religious purpose mixed with a secular purpose, and yet the

statute does not violate the Establishment Clause. Lynch, 465

U.S. at 680. Indeed, even in Wallace, both the majority and

Justice Powell’s concurrence recognized that a statute can still

be constitutional even when the statute has both secular and

religious purposes. 472 U.S. at 56 & n.41 (majority) (holding

that “even though a statute that is motivated in part by a religious purpose may satisfy the first criterion . . . the First

Amendment requires that a statute must be invalidated if it is

entirely motivated by a purpose to advance religion” and “a

statute must be invalidated if it is entirely motivated by a purpose to advance religion.”; id. at 64 (Powell, J., concurring)

(“We have not interpreted the first prong of Lemon, supra,

however, as requiring that a statute have ‘exclusively secular’

objectives. . . . If such a requirement existed, much conduct

and legislation approved by this Court in the past would have

been invalidated.”).

The preamble to the 2002 Act specifically mentions Zorach

v. Clausen, 343 U.S. 306, 313 (1952). In Zorach, the plaintiffs

brought a challenge under the Establishment Clause to a New

York City program releasing children who wanted to attend

classes on religion from attendance in public school for part

of the day. As is the case here, no student was forced to participate in any religious exercises. Id. at 311-12.31 Similarly,

in Marsh v. Chambers, the Court held that the opening of the

31Also, as is the case here, any coercion in Zorach was from fellow students, not any of the state employees. Again, the Court dismissed such

coercion as not being controlled by the Establishment Clause: “The only

allegation in the complaint that bears on the issue [of coercion] is that the

operation of the program ‘has resulted and inevitably results in the exercise of pressure and coercion upon parents and children to secure attendance by the children for religious instruction.’ But this charge does not

even implicate the school authorities.” Zorach, 343 U.S. 306, 312 n.7

(1952). 

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Nebraska legislature’s session with a prayer by a chaplain

paid for with public funds was simply an acknowledgment of

the role that religion played in our nation’s history. Marsh v.

Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 793 (1983). There, as the Court

observed, the nation’s historical practices can outweigh even

obvious religious concerns under the Establishment Clause:

We turn then to the question of whether any features

of the Nebraska practice violate the Establishment

Clause. Beyond the bare fact that a prayer is offered,

three points have been made: first, that a clergyman

of only one denomination-Presbyterian-has been

selected for 16 years; second, that the chaplain is

paid at public expense; and third, that the prayers are

in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Weighed against the

historical background, these factors do not serve to

invalidate Nebraska’s practice.

Id. at 792-93 (footnotes omitted). 

The Court later invalidated opening a graduation ceremony

with a prayer, citing the vulnerability of children. The religious component of the words at issue was much stronger;

Lee involved a religious exercise. Here, a patriotic exercise is

involved which only mentions the concept of “God.”

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Volume 2 of 4

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The dissent would have us strike down the Pledge because

it is not exclusively secular, but contains the words “under

God.” The Lemon test, however, asks whether a challenged

statute or governmental action is predominantly religious or

secular, not exclusively secular. McCreary County, 545 U.S.

at 867-68. This formulation makes sense because oftentimes

what one person considers secular, another considers religious. For instance, even the dissent thinks the 1942 version

of the Pledge was secular, yet that was the version challenged

in West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624,

626, 629 (1943). Dissent at 4028-29. To the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Barnette, even the version of the Pledge that did not

contain the words “under God” violated their religious freedom by causing them to pledge allegiance to something other

than God. Id.

In Barnette, Jehovah’s Witnesses challenged a school board

regulation requiring students to recite the Pledge and salute

the flag, contending that the regulation compelled them to

violate their religious prohibition against bowing down to a

graven image. 319 U.S. at 626, 629. Refusal to comply with

the mandatory Pledge recitation resulted in the expulsion of

the student from school and criminal penalties for his parents

for the consequent truancy. Id. at 630. The school policy did

not allow students to opt out for any reason, much less without explanation, as do the schools involved here. The

Supreme Court held the school policy mandating recitation of

the Pledge violated the Free Speech Clause of the First

Amendment, because the policy forced the students, under

threat of penalty, to recite the Pledge against their wishes. Id.

at 633-34, 642. The Supreme Court did not, however, go as

far as the dissent would here, and strike down the Pledge of

Allegiance. The Supreme Court held that as long as recitation

of the Pledge was optional, then the Pledge was constitutional. The same principle applies here. This is one of the

great principles of our nation, when it comes to participating

in non-violent religious exercises, or holding particular religious views: All may, none must.

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[18] In the context of the Pledge, the phrase “one Nation

under God” constitutes a powerful admission by the government of its own limitations.32 Although the phrase also has

religious connotations, “one Nation under God” in the Pledge

is a reference to the historical and political underpinnings of

our nation. As Justice Brennan noted, “[T]he revised pledge

of allegiance, for example, may merely recognize the historical fact that our Nation was believed to have been founded

‘under God.’ Thus reciting the pledge may be no more of a

religious exercise than the reading aloud of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, which contains an allusion to the same historical fact.” Schempp, 374 U.S. at 304 (Brennan, J., concurring).

[19] In light of the patriotic context in which the phrase

“under God” is recited and the historical context in which that

phrase has been enacted into law, we hold its voluntary recitation as part of the Pledge by school children, as practiced by

the Rio Linda Union School District, does not violate the

Establishment Clause.

VIII. The Endorsement Test: The Pledge has neither

the purpose nor the effect of endorsing religion.

[20] For the same reasons we find the Pledge does not violate the Lemon test, we similarly find the Pledge does not violate the Endorsement Test, first articulated by Justice

O’Connor in her Lynch concurrence and subsequently

32Whether Congress could have represented sufficiently the historical

and political foundations of our nation with a wholly secular phrase

instead of “one Nation under God” is not for us to say. The Establishment

Clause does not require the government to show it has adopted the most

narrow means of accomplishing its objectives by avoiding reference to

religion or God wherever possible. In upholding the display of a crèche

as part of a City’s annual Christmas display, the Lynch Court stated that

“Justice [Brennan in dissent] argues that the City’s objectives could have

been achieved without including the crèche in the display. True or not, that

is irrelevant. The question is whether the display of the crèche violates the

Establishment Clause.” Lynch, 465 U.S. at 681 n.7 (citation omitted). 

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adopted by a majority of the Court in County of Allegheny.

492 U.S. at 578-79. Under the Endorsement Test, we look to

see whether the challenged governmental action has the purpose or effect of endorsing, favoring, or promoting religion,

particularly if it has the effect of endorsing one religion over

another. Id. at 593-94. “Endorsement sends a message to nonadherents that they are outsiders, not full members of the

political community.” Lynch, 465 U.S. at 688 (O’Connor, J.,

concurring). 

[Under the Endorsement Test,] the question is what

viewers may fairly understand to be the purpose of

the display. That inquiry, of necessity, turns upon the

context in which the contested object appears: A typical museum setting, though not neutralizing the religious content of a religious painting, negates any

message of endorsement of that content.

County of Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 595 (internal marks omitted). In other words, under the Endorsement Test, as under the

Lemon Test, the words “one Nation under God” must be analyzed in terms of the context of the Pledge, which the dissent

once again fails to do.

Thus, in Wallace v. Jaffree, the Court held Alabama’s

moment-of-silence statute was unconstitutional because it was

“enacted . . . for the sole purpose of expressing the State’s

endorsement of prayer activities.” 472 U.S. at 60. Similarly,

in County of Allegheny, the Court held a nativity display with

a banner proclaiming “Gloria in Excelsis Deo” unconstitutional because it was intended to convey the message that the

viewer should give glory to God for the birth of Christ, a specifically Christian belief. 492 U.S. at 580.

[21] Here, in contrast, as analyzed in detail above, both the

purpose and effect of the Pledge are that of a predominantly

patriotic, not a religious, exercise. The phrase “under God” is

a recognition of our Founder’s political philosophy that a

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power greater than the government gives the people their

inalienable rights. Thus, the Pledge is an endorsement of our

form of government, not of religion or any particular sect.

[22] The dissent would have us analyze the Pledge in

terms of what a child reciting it may or may not understand

about the historical significance of the words being recited.

But a child’s understanding cannot be the basis for our constitutional analysis. The Supreme Court has expressly rejected

this approach: “We decline to employ Establishment Clause

jurisprudence using a modified heckler’s veto, in which a

group’s religious activity can be proscribed on the basis of

what the youngest members of the audience might misperceive.” Good News Club v. Milford Central Sch., 533 U.S. 98,

119 (2001). Rather, the inquiry turns on how a reasonable

observer would view the wording of the Pledge as a whole:

“[B]ecause our concern is with the political community writ large, the endorsement inquiry is not about

the perceptions of particular individuals or saving

isolated nonadherents from . . . discomfort . . . . It is

for this reason that the reasonable observer in the

endorsement inquiry must be deemed aware of the

history and context of the community and forum in

which the [activity takes place].”

Id. (emphasis added) (quoting Capitol Square Review & Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753, 779-80 (1995) (O’Connor,

J., concurring in part and concurring in the judgment)). We

recognize some school children who are unaware of its history may perceive the phrase “under God” in the Pledge to

refer exclusively to a monotheistic God of a particular religion. A reasonable observer, however, aware of the history

and origins of the words in the Pledge would view the Pledge

as a product of this nation’s history and political philosophy.

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IX. The Coercion Test: The Pledge does not coerce

students to support or participate in religion or in a

religious exercise.

This brings us to plaintiffs’ next contention, that the recitation of the Pledge in a public school classroom unconstitutionally coerces objecting students into affirming a belief in

God. Even though the students in the school are not compelled33

to recite the Pledge by threat of penalty, are they nonetheless

coerced into participating in a religious exercise? Relying primarily on the Supreme Court’s decision in Lee v. Weisman,

plaintiffs ask us to find they are.

We agree that the students in elementary schools are being

coerced to listen to the other students recite the Pledge. They

may even feel induced to recite the Pledge themselves.

Although the School District’s Policy does not compel them

to recite the Pledge, or even to listen to others reciting the

Pledge, we recognize that elementary school children are

unlikely to walk out of the classroom in protest. But the main

distinction is this: Here, the students are being coerced to participate in a patriotic exercise, not a religious exercise. The

Pledge is not a prayer and its recitation is not a religious exercise. The students are not being forced to become involuntary

congregants listening to a prayer, as they were in Lee. 505

U.S. at 593.

33Under the School District’s policy, the recitation of the Pledge is

purely voluntary. Students can choose not to recite the Pledge for any personal reason and to keep that reason to themselves. No student is required

to recite or even to hear the recitation of the Pledge, nor can any student

be disciplined for refusing to participate. Students can also participate in

the recitation of the Pledge and simply omit the words “under God” without fear of discipline. Thus, the free speech claim that was involved in

Barnette, where the students were forced to say the Pledge, is not at issue

in this case. 319 U.S. at 630. We note that even though the Barnette Court

held students who considered it to be against their religion could not be

forced to recite the Pledge, the Court nonetheless did not hold that those

students could also prevent other students who had no such religious

objection from reciting the Pledge, which is what plaintiffs seek here. 

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Children are coerced into doing all sort of things in school,

such as learning to read and to solve mathematical problems.

What they must not be coerced into doing is to support or participate in religion, or engage in a religious exercise. Lee’s

indirect psychological coercion analysis, by its own terms,

applies only to religion or to religious exercises, which carry

“a particular risk of indirect coercion.” Lee, 505 U.S. at 592.

In Lee v. Weisman, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of an invocation and benediction prayer delivered by a rabbi during a high school graduation ceremony.

505 U.S. at 580. The prayer contained repeated references and

thanks to God and, throughout its opinion, the Court

described the prayer as a “religious exercise.” See e.g., id. at

580-82, 588, 589, 598. In analyzing the constitutionality of

the prayer, the Lee Court adopted and applied what is now

known as the coercion test: “[A]t a minimum, the Constitution

guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support

or participate in religion or its exercise.” Id. at 587.34

The Supreme Court, in a divided 5-4 decision, held the

prayer failed the coercion test and was unconstitutional.

Although attendance at the graduation ceremony was voluntary, the students’ participation in an event as important as a

high school graduation ceremony was in a “fair and real sense

obligatory.” Id. at 586, 595. Although the students were not

compelled to say the prayers, the students in attendance would

nonetheless be indirectly coerced to participate in the religious exercise or at least maintain respectful silence. Id. at

593. 

34Although plaintiffs do not raise the argument RoeChild-2 is required

to “support or participate” in religion, the dissent calls attention to these

words in Lee. It is difficult to see how RoeChild-2 supports or participates

in religion when she is neither required to recite nor even to listen to the

Pledge, and when it is stipulated by her attorneys that she has never said

the Pledge. 

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The Court in Lee, however, expressly confined its holding

to religious exercises. “These dominant facts mark and control the confines of our decision: State officials direct the performance of a formal religious exercise at promotional and

graduation ceremonies for secondary schools.” 505 U.S. at

586; see also id. at 599 (“The sole question presented is

whether a religious exercise may be conducted at a graduation

ceremony . . . .”) (emphasis added).35 The Lee Court noted the

Pledge of Allegiance, with “under God” in it by then, was

recited at the graduation ceremony before the challenged

prayer. Lee, 505 U.S. at 583. Although not dispositive of our

inquiry, we find it telling that the plaintiffs in Lee did not

challenge, nor did the Court suggest, the recitation of the

Pledge was unconstitutionally coercive. Lee did not rule that

every mention of God or religion in public school is unconstitutionally coercive. Other Courts of Appeal examining this

issue and applying Lee agree. 

In holding a school policy providing for the daily recitation

of the Pledge by students does not violate the Establishment

Clause, the Fourth Circuit explained:

The prayers ruled unconstitutional in Lee, Schempp,

and Engel . . . were viewed by the Court as distinctly

religious exercises. It was the religious nature of

these activities that gave rise to the concern that nonparticipating students would be indirectly coerced

35Eight years later, in Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290

(2000), the Court applied Lee’s indirect coercion test to invalidate a school

policy that permitted, but did not require, students to elect a speaker to

deliver “a brief invocation and/or message” before high-school football

games. Id. at 298 n.6, 301-02. Once again, it was the nature of the activity

—a prayer—that coerced those in attendance to participate in an unconstitutional exercise: “Even if we regard every high school student’s decision

to attend a home football game as purely voluntary, we are nevertheless

persuaded that the delivery of a pregame prayer has the improper effect

of coercing those present to participate in an act of religious worship.” Id.

at 312. 

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into accepting a religious message. The indirect

coercion analysis discussed in Lee, Schempp, and

Engel, simply is not relevant in cases, like this one,

challenging non-religious activities. Even assuming

that the recitation of the Pledge contains a risk of

indirect coercion, the indirect coercion is not threatening to establish religion, but patriotism.

Myers, 418 F.3d at 408 (emphasis added); see also Elk Grove,

542 U.S. at 31 n.4 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring) (“[W]hatever

the virtues and vices of Lee, the Court was concerned only

with ‘formal religious exercise[s],’ which the Pledge is not.”

(citation omitted)); Sherman, 980 F.2d at 444-47 (holding that

the phrase “under God” does not turn the Pledge from a patriotic exercise into a religious exercise, and finding that the

state can coerce students into performing such patriotic exercises as reciting the Pledge).

[23] Limiting Lee’s indirect coercion analysis to religious

exercises is consistent with the purposes of the Establishment

Clause. Where, as here, compulsion to recite is absent, government action respects an establishment of religion only if

the government coerces students to engage in a religious exercise. Coercion to engage in a patriotic activity, like the Pledge

of Allegiance, does not run afoul of the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court recognized this distinction in the earliest

of the school prayer cases, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421

(1962). In Engel, the Court considered a school’s policy

directing children to say aloud a prayer written by state officials. The Court found this policy violated the Establishment

Clause because “[the] program of daily classroom invocation

of God’s blessings as prescribed in the Regents’ prayer is a

religious activity. It is a solemn avowal of divine faith and

supplication for the blessings of the Almighty. The nature of

such a prayer has always been religious.” Id. at 424-25. The

Court was also careful, however, to distinguish the prayer in

Engel from a ceremonial reference to God in a footnote:

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There is of course nothing in the decision reached

here that is inconsistent with the fact that school

children and others are officially encouraged to

express love for our country by reciting historical

documents such as the Declaration of Independence

which contain references to the Deity or by singing

officially espoused anthems which include the composer’s professions of faith in a Supreme Being, or

with the fact that there are many manifestations in

our public life of belief in God. Such patriotic or ceremonial occasions bear no true resemblance to the

unquestioned religious exercise that the State of New

York has sponsored in this instance.

Id. at 435 n. 21. Thus, the Court drew an explicit distinction

between patriotic mentions of God on the one hand, and

prayer, an “unquestioned religious exercise,” on the other.

Therefore, we hold the School District’s Policy providing for

the voluntary recitation of the Pledge does not violate the Lee

coercion test.

X. Newdow III Does Not Constitute Binding Precedent.

[24] Finally, we explain why Newdow III does not control

our analysis. As all members of our panel agree, the district

court erred by holding this court’s decision in Newdow III is

binding precedent that district courts in this circuit and this

court must follow. The Supreme Court in Elk Grove reversed

the Newdow III decision, holding the sole plaintiff, Newdow,

lacked prudential standing to challenge the constitutionality of

the Pledge. Thus, the Supreme Court held Newdow III erred

by reaching the merits of the case.

[25] There is an important difference, overlooked by the

district court, between a reversal on a merits ground (a question of substantive law) and a reversal on a threshold ground

(a question whether the court has jurisdiction to reach the substantive law claims). Merits questions may be independent of

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each other; reversal on one merits ground may leave the decisions reached on other grounds intact. In contrast, when the

Supreme Court reverses a lower court’s decision on a threshold question, such as prudential standing, it effectively holds

the lower court erred by reaching the merits of the case. See

Tenet v. Doe, 544 U.S. 1, 6 n.4 (2005) (“[T]he prudential

standing doctrine [is a] ‘threshold question.’ ”). This is precisely what the Supreme Court did in Elk Grove. Because the

Supreme Court held the Newdow III court erred by deciding

the Establishment Clause question, Newdow III’s holding on

that question is not precedential. To hold otherwise would

give precedential effect to the determination of an issue that

should never have been decided. Preiser v. Newkirk, 422 U.S.

395, 401 (1975) (“[A] federal court has neither the power to

render advisory opinions nor to decide questions that cannot

affect the rights of litigants in the case before them.”) (citations and internal quotation marks omitted).36

[26] Newdow III is not binding for another, more important, reason: The law has changed. Congress, in 2002, reenacted the Pledge in response to this court’s opinion in Newdow I. It is the 2002 Congress’ purpose we are called upon to

examine. The findings of the 2002 Congress make this a very

different case from that evaluated by this court in Newdow I

because the 2002 Congress detailed findings that make it clear

36The district court noted several courts have reached the merits of a

case without deciding a disputed prudential standing question. True, courts

have decided cases that presented “relatively easy” merits questions

against the plaintiff without determining whether the plaintiff has standing. See e.g., Am. Iron & Steel Inst. v. OSHA, 182 F.3d 1261, 1274 n.10

(11th Cir. 1999). Nevertheless, no court has ever bypassed a prudential

standing question to rule in favor of the party lacking prudential standing,

but attempting to invoke the court’s subject matter jurisdiction as to the

merits. Because the Supreme Court ruled our Newdow III court should not

have bypassed the prudential standing question to rule in favor of Newdow, Newdow III ‘s ruling on the merits is not binding. 

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the 2002 Act was enacted for secular reasons which are constitutional.37

Furthermore, the Supreme Court clarified the analysis to be

applied to Establishment Clause cases in Van Orden and

McCreary County, which came down in 2005 after our 2003

decision in Newdow III. These cases are instrumental in showing us that the majority in Newdow III (of which Judge Reinhardt was a member) used an incomplete analysis when it

concentrated solely on the two words “under God.” For the

reasons we express herein, we simply cannot agree that this

is the correct focus under the current Supreme Court law.

XI. Conclusion

[27] We hold that California Education Code § 52720 and

the School District’s Policy of having teachers lead students

in the daily recitation of the Pledge, and allowing those who

do not wish to participate to refuse to do so with impunity, do

not violate the Establishment Clause. Therefore, we reverse

the decision of the district court holding the School District’s

Policy unconstitutional and vacate the permanent injunction

prohibiting the recitation of the Pledge by willing students. 

REVERSED.

37Although the 2002 Act was technically passed before issuance of

Newdow III, neither the parties nor this court addressed the effect the 2002

Act had on the analysis. Newdow III, though decided after the 2002 Act,

addressed the newly raised questions of whether Newdow had standing

and authority to represent his child, and did not revisit the fundamental

Establishment Clause analysis of Newdow I. 

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REINHARDT, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

Contents

Introduction ......................................................................3931

I. The Majority’s Fundamental Errors .......................3936

II. Historical and Factual Background .......................3939

A. Religious Origins of the “Under God”

Amendment .....................................................3943

B. Congressional Enactment of the “Under

God” Amendment ...........................................3948

C. The 1954 Amendment and America’s

Schoolchildren .................................................3956

D. The 2002 “Reaffirmation” ..............................3966

E. Jan Roe and Her Child’s Constitutional

Claim ...............................................................3974

III. The 1954 Amendment and This Appeal ...............3976

A. Recent Contrivance of the Majority’s

Novel Theory ..................................................3979

B. Immateriality of the 2002 Legislation ...........3983

C. The Issue: The Constitutionality of the

1954 Amendment As Applied .......................3989

IV. Establishment Clause Tests ....................................3990

A. The Lemon Test and the

“Under God” Amendment ..............................3992

B. The Endorsement Test and the “Under

God” Amendment ...........................................4024

C. The Coercion Test and the “Under God”

Amendment .....................................................4029

D. Application of the Tests to the 2002

Legislation .......................................................4042

V. The Inapplicability of Alternative Theories ..........4043

A. Supreme Court Dicta ......................................4044

B. Ceremonial Deism ..........................................4054

C. The De Minimis Theory ................................4060

VI. Conclusion ...............................................................4064

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Introduction

Were this a case to be decided on the basis of the law or

the Constitution, the outcome would be clear. Under no sound

legal analysis adhering to binding Supreme Court precedent

could this court uphold state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance

by children in public schools. It is not the recitation of the

Pledge as it long endured that is at issue here, but its recitation

with the congressionally added two words, “under God” —

words added in 1954 for the specific religious purpose, among

others, of indoctrinating public schoolchildren with a religious

belief. The recitations of the amended version as conducted

by the Rio Linda Union and other school districts fail all three

of the Court’s Establishment Clause tests: The recitation of

the Pledge in its historic secular version would not fail any of

them. Only a desire to change the rules regarding the separation of church and state or an unwillingness to place this court

on the unpopular side of a highly controversial dispute regarding both patriotism and religion could explain the decision the

members of the majority reach here and the lengths to which

their muddled and self-contradictory decision goes in order to

reach the result they do.

To put it bluntly, no judge familiar with the history of the

Pledge could in good conscience believe, as today’s majority

purports to do, that the words “under God” were inserted into

the Pledge for any purpose other than an explicitly and predominantly religious one: “to recognize the power and the

universality of God in our pledge of allegiance;” to “acknowledge the dependence of our people, and our Government upon

the moral direction and the restraints of religion,” 100 Cong.

Rec. 7590-91 (1954); and to indoctrinate schoolchildren in the

belief that God exists, id. at 5915, 6919. Nor could any judge

familiar with controlling Supreme Court precedent seriously

deny that carrying out such an indoctrination in a public

school classroom unconstitutionally forces many young children either to profess a religious belief antithetical to their

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personal views or to declare themselves through their silence

or nonparticipation to be protesting nonbelievers, thereby subjecting themselves to hostility and ridicule.

It is equally clear that no judge familiar with our constitutional history and the history of the Pledge could legitimately

rely on a 2002 “reaffirmation” to justify the incorporation of

the words “under God” into the Pledge in 1954 by a statutory

amendment, or suggest that, in determining the question

before us, we should not look to that amendment but only to

the Pledge itself, as if the finite act in 1954 of transforming

a purely secular patriotic pledge into a vehicle to promote religion, and to indoctrinate public schoolchildren with a belief

in God, had never occurred. Finally, no such judge could

ignore the fact that in a clearly controlling decision that binds

us here the Supreme Court has directed us, in deciding a constitutional question such as we now face, to examine the 1954

amendment and why it was adopted rather than to look to the

pertinent statute, here the Pledge, as a whole. See Wallace v.

Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 58-61 (1985).

The undeniably religious purpose of the “under God”

amendment to the Pledge and the inherently coercive nature

of its teacher-led daily recitation in public schools ought to be

sufficient under any Establishment Clause analysis to vindicate Jan Roe and her child’s constitutional claim, and to

require that the Pledge of Allegiance, when recited as part of

a daily state-directed, teacher-led program, be performed in its

original, pre-amendment secular incarnation that served us so

well for generations. Surely, our original Pledge, without the

McCarthy-era effort to indoctrinate our nation’s children with

a state-held religious belief, was no less patriotic. For purposes of this case, the only difference between the original

secular Pledge and the amended religious version is that the

former did not subject, and was not designed to subject, our

children to an attempt by their government to impose on them

a religious belief regarding the existence of God. We should

indeed have had more faith in our country, our citizens, and

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our Constitution than we exhibited at the peak of the McCarthy era when we enacted the religious amendment to our

Pledge of Allegiance, in part to inculcate in our children a

belief in God. In doing so, we abandoned our historic principle that secular matters were for the state and matters of faith

were for the church. The majority does so again today, sadly,

by twisting, distorting, and misrepresenting the law, as well

as the issues that are before us.

Today’s majority opinion will undoubtedly be celebrated,

at least publicly, by almost all political figures, and by many

citizens as well, without regard for the constitutional principles it violates and without regard for the judicial precedents

it defies and distorts, just as this court’s decision in Newdow

I

1

 was condemned by so many who did not even bother to

read it and simply rushed to join the political bandwagon. As

before, there will be little attention paid to the constitutional

rights of the minority or to the fundamental tenets of the

Establishment Clause. Instead, to the joy or relief, as the case

may be, of the two members of the majority, this court’s willingness to abandon its constitutional responsibilities will be

praised as patriotic and may even burnish the court’s reputation among those who believe that it adheres too strictly to the

dictates of the Constitution or that it values excessively the

mandate of the Bill of Rights.

If a majority of the populace comes to believe in a patriotism that requires the abdication of judicial responsibility, if

it comes to accept that we can only honor our nation by ignoring its basic values, if it comes to embrace a practice of bringing together the many by forfeiting the rights of the few, then

1Newdow v. U.S. Cong., 292 F.3d 597 (9th Cir. 2002) (“Newdow I”),

amended by 328 F.3d 482 (9th Cir. 2003) (“Newdow III”), rev’d on other

grounds sub nom. Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1

(2004); see also Newdow v. U.S. Cong., 313 F.3d 500 (9th Cir. 2002)

(“Newdow II”) (addressing a justiciability issue without making any

change to Newdow I). 

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we clearly will have imposed an untenable burden not only on

our nation in general but on the judiciary in particular. In such

circumstances, adherence to constitutional principles by all

members of this court and all members of the judiciary will

become all the more important. I do not doubt that many

Americans feel bound together by their faith in God, but

whatever beliefs may be shared by a majority of our citizens,

it is respect for the rights of minorities and for the Constitution itself that must bind us all. That is not an easily achieved

objective, as today’s decision shows, but it remains an essential one. 

History leaves no doubt that Congress inserted the words

“under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance in order to inculcate

in America’s youth a belief in religion, and specifically a

belief in God. No matter the majority’s attempts to obfuscate

the question, the record on that point is clear. It is equally

clear that the daily, state-sponsored, teacher-led recitation of

the “under God” version of the Pledge in public schools, institutions in which First Amendment rights are most in need of

vigilant protection, violates the Establishment Clause, under

any legal analysis in which this court may properly engage.

If our constitutional principles are to be redefined in the manner the majority suggests (and I would hope that they would

not be), only the Supreme Court may do so, not two members

of an appellate court who for varying reasons wish to repudiate our earlier decision. 

The Constitution “has never meant that a majority could

use the machinery of the State to practice its beliefs.” Sch.

Dist. of Abington Twp. v. Schemp, 374 U.S. 203, 226 (1963).

It was to forestall practices such as are currently engaged in

by the Rio Linda and other school districts that the Founders

adopted the Establishment Clause while deliberately omitting

the term “God” from the Constitution. The Founders sought

to preserve a strict division between the religious and the secular, and between the Church and the State. As appellate

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judges it is our duty to preserve that division, unless and until

the Supreme Court instructs us to the contrary.

The 2002 reaffirmation2 by Congress made no change in

the Pledge as amended in 1954, but simply purported to reaffirm the earlier Congress’s action fifty years before, when it

added to it the additional phrase “under God”; it also sought

to explain why it believed that the earlier Congress’s action

was constitutional at the time it was taken, and why it thought

that this court’s interpretation of the Constitution in Newdow

I half a century after the amendment was adopted was wrong.3

Any effort to address the issue before us, however, must be

based not on what happened in 2002, long after the “under

God” amendment was adopted, but on the facts and circumstances surrounding the enactment of that amendment in

1954, as well as on other relevant historical facts. There is

simply no basis in law, constitutional or otherwise, for using

an event that occurred many years later, let alone one of no

legal significance, to attempt to rewrite history: here, the history relating to the enactment of the amendment to the Pledge

2Throughout this dissent, the terms “reaffirmation” and “recodification”

are used interchangeably when referring to the 2002 legislation. The former term is appropriate because the legislation was entitled “An Act To

reaffirm the reference to one Nation under God in the Pledge of Allegiance.” Pub. L. No. 107-293, 116 Stat. 2057 (2002). The latter term is

also appropriate because the act contained two “codification” sections, one

of which recodified “the exact language that has appeared in the Pledge

for decades” at 4 U.S.C. § 4, and the other of which recodified “the exact

language that has appeared in the [National] Motto for decades” at 36

U.S.C. § 302. Id. at 2060-61. 

3The only substantive change made by the 2002 recodification involves

a minor modification of the manner in which the Pledge is to be recited.

Although the majority implies that all of the statutory provisions that

explain how the Pledge should be recited were added in 2002, maj. op. at

3894, those instructions were in fact added in 1976. See Pub. L. No. 94-

344, 90 Stat. 810 (1976). The 2002 Congress modified only the instruction

that “men should remove their headdress” when reciting the Pledge, to

read “men should remove any non-religious headdress.” Pub. L. No. 107-

293, 116 Stat. 2057, 2060 (2002) (emphasis added). 

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in 1954. History cannot be eradicated by a different Congress’s recitation long afterwards of its version of the events

that preceded or followed the actions of an earlier body. If this

is not apparent to all on its face, it is clear as a matter of law,

because the Supreme Court has so squarely held. See

McCreary County v. ACLU of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 871-72

(2005).

I. The Majority’s Fundamental Errors

A reader of the majority opinion, if unfamiliar with the

facts of this case and the law that intermediate courts are

bound to apply to those facts, would be left with a number of

misconceptions about both. It might be helpful to identify the

most fundamental of those misconceptions at the outset, prior

to engaging in the more detailed examination of the facts and

the law that follows. Although the majority’s reasoning is far

from clear, its conclusion that the state-directed, teacher-led,

daily recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge in

public schools complies with the Establishment Clause

appears to result from at least seven major errors in its legal

analysis.

First, this case involves only the phrase “under God” as

recited by young children as part of a state-directed, teacherled, daily program in public schools. Only those two words

are at issue. The plaintiffs in this case do not ask us to “strike

down the Pledge” or to prohibit its recitation, as the majority

claims. Rather, they ask only that the two words be stricken

and that the state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation return

to the original, purely secular Pledge of Allegiance that

schoolchildren had recited long before Congress enacted it

into law in 1942, and long before Congress added the religious phrase at issue here by statutory amendment in 1954. 

Second, the majority asserts that “under God” as that term

appears in the amendment to the Pledge is not a religious

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pose. Instead, the majority argues that “under God” is simply

“a reference to the historical and political underpinnings of

our nation,” that its purpose is to remind us that ours is a “limited government” and, thus, that the term as adopted by Congress has a predominantly secular meaning and purpose.

There is simply no basis in fact or law for so absurd an assertion. If the plain meaning of the words “under God” were not

enough to demonstrate beyond any doubt that the majority’s

contention borders on the irrational, and that the term is predominantly, if not entirely, religious in both meaning and purpose, the overwhelmingly religious intent of the legislators

who added the phrase to the Pledge, as shown by the unanimous statements to that effect in the Congressional Record,

would remove any possible doubt from the mind of any objective person. 

Third, the majority states that in order to determine the constitutionality of the amendment adding the phrase “under

God” to the Pledge, we must examine the Pledge as a whole

and not the amendment. Well-established controlling

Supreme Court law is squarely to the contrary. See Wallace

v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985). Wallace makes it clear, beyond

dispute, that it is the amendment and its language, not the

Pledge in its entirety, that courts must examine when, as here,

it is the amendment, not the Pledge as a whole, that is the subject of the claim of unconstitutionality. The majority’s error

in this respect causes it to analyze the legal issues improperly

throughout its opinion. Examining the wrong issue inevitably

leads the majority to reach the wrong result. 

Fourth, the amendment to the Pledge that added the phrase

“under God” was, contrary to the majority’s contention,

adopted in 1954, not in 2002. Congress’s reaffirmation of the

“under God” amendment in response to this court’s Newdow

I decision is of no legal consequence. Congress could not and

did not change the meaning and purpose of the 1954 amendment in 2002 and did not purport to do so. It simply proclaimed that we were wrong in our legal ruling and that we

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erred in our constitutional analysis of the First Amendment

issue. Although the 2002 Congress did not purport to suggest

a different purpose for Congress’s 1954 action than did the

earlier Congress, even had it sought to add a secular purpose,

such as to remind us of our nation’s “limited government” or

“historical principles of governance,” doing so would not

have changed the overwhelmingly predominant religious

meaning and purpose of the amendment. See McCreary

County v. ACLU of Ky., 545 U.S. 844 (2005). Nor, certainly,

would it have changed the effect of the amendment upon the

schoolchildren who are subjected to the state-directed,

teacher-led, daily recitations of the Pledge. 

Fifth, the majority suggests that the School District’s policy

is constitutional because under that policy only “willing” students recite the Pledge. The majority does not and cannot

make that argument explicitly, however, because it is wellestablished that the Constitution forbids governmental coercion, and not just compulsion, of religious belief. The majority acknowledges at a later point in its opinion that public

schoolchildren are “coerced to participate” in the statedirected, teacher-led recitation of the “under God” version of

the Pledge, but then excuses that coercion on other grounds

that are as fallacious as its initial argument. 

Sixth, the majority repeatedly asserts that under the coercion test only “religious exercises” may be deemed unconstitutional. The majority’s “religious exercise” limitation

conflicts with the express holding of Lee v. Weisman, 505

U.S. 577, 587 (1992), as well as the Supreme Court’s decisions in Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) (per curiam),

and Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987). Coercion is

prohibited with respect to participation in religious activities

as well as other efforts to support or promote religion. Moreover, the majority errs in its contention that because the

Pledge constitutes a patriotic rather than a religious exercise,

the religious component does not fail the coercion test. A religious component included in a secular exercise, whether or

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not a patriotic one, is subject to the same coercion rules as is

any other religious practice to which public school students

are subjected. Further, the majority’s assertion that the

coerced recitation of the Pledge does not require “a personal

affirmation . . . that the speaker believes in God” is not only

contradicted within the majority opinion itself, but is foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s explicit statement that the

Pledge “requires affirmation of a belief.” W. Va. State Bd. of

Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 633 (1943). In any event, it

is self-evident that one cannot profess to believe that our

nation is “under God” without professing to believe that God

exists. 

Seventh, the majority appears at several points in its opinion to imply that the use of the term “under God” in the

Pledge may be justified by the doctrine of ceremonial deism.

The theory of ceremonial deism has never been approved by

the Supreme Court for use in Establishment Clause cases in

general; the Court has, however, expressly disapproved the

use of that doctrine to justify state-sponsored religious practices in the public schools. Lee, 505 U.S. at 596-97. The

majority’s suggestion that the doctrine may be applicable here

is clearly erroneous. 

If the majority made only one or two of the seven fundamental errors described above, its conclusion that the statedirected, teacher-led, daily recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge is constitutional could not stand. With all

seven errors, the majority sets an all-time record for failure to

conform to any part of any of the three tests governing compliance with the Establishment Clause. Unless and until those

tests are reversed or repudiated by the Supreme Court, an

appellate court is not free to disregard the law and the Constitution in the manner that the two judges in the majority have

in the case before us.

II. Historical and Factual Background

To begin with, this case concerns the daily recitation of a

state-directed, teacher-led, religious version of the Pledge of

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Allegiance in public schools, a setting that the Supreme Court

has always considered especially significant to its Establishment Clause analysis. A proper constitutional analysis must

give substantial weight to the critical fact that we are dealing

with “young impressionable children whose school attendance

is statutorily compelled.” Sch. Dist. of Abington Twp. v.

Schemp, 374 U.S. 203, 307 (1963) (Goldberg, J., concurring);

Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 584 (1987) (same). We

must also bear in mind that the issue before us is whether

those children may, regardless of their own fundamental

views, be subjected to a daily Pledge that includes a religious

component, as opposed to simply reciting the historic version

of the Pledge that contained no reference to God. However,

before discussing the complex case law regarding the Establishment Clause, or the less complex case law regarding the

relationship between the Establishment Clause and public

schoolchildren, it is important to have a full understanding of

the words at the heart of this controversy, the added two

words of the amended Pledge, and the history of how the

Pledge grew from twenty-nine to thirty-one words in 1954. 

For many Americans, the current version of the Pledge is

the only version they have ever known. Some individuals not

familiar with our political history may even be under the

impression that its language dates back to the founding fathers.4

But those of us who attended school before the 1950s, including at least two members of this panel, may remember a different Pledge of Allegiance, a wholly secular pledge that was

based solely on patriotism and not on any attempt at religious

indoctrination. That version of the Pledge, the original version, was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892. It read: “I

pledge allegiance, to my flag, and to the Republic for which

4See, for example, the words of former Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska:

“If [the Pledge] was good enough for the founding fathers, its [sic] good

enough for me . . . .” Eagle Forum Alaska, 2006 Gubernatorial Candidate

Questionnaire, July 31, 2006, http://irregulartimes.com/eagle-forum-2006-

gubernatorial-candidate.html. 

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it stands — one Nation indivisible — with Liberty and Justice

for all.” The Pledge achieved such popularity and acceptability that in 1942, Congress codified it, departing only slightly

from Bellamy’s words by replacing “my flag” with “the flag

of the United States of America,” thereby recognizing officially the minor change that had been made in practice a generation earlier.5

 Neither Bellamy’s version nor the slightly

modified official version, recited for many years by schoolchildren throughout the land, contained any language even

remotely associated with religious beliefs. 

It was not until 1954 that the provision amending the

Pledge was enacted, inserting the words “under God” into the

Pledge of Allegiance, and it is at this point that the majority’s

version of history diverges sharply from the facts. In the

majority’s view, the words “under God” were added to the

Pledge for a predominantly secular purpose. That is simply

not the case. Seizing on the fact that the amendment to the

Pledge was adopted during the Cold War, the majority asserts

that the “words ‘under God’ were added . . . to reinforce the

idea that our nation is founded upon a concept of a limited

government, in stark contrast to . . . communist forms of government.” Maj. op. at 3909 (emphasis added).6

 In the majori5Act of June 22, 1942, Pub. L. No. 77-623, §7, 56 Stat. 377, 380 (1942)

(codified as amended at 4 U.S.C. § 4 (2006)). The change from “my flag”

to “the flag of the United States” had already taken place informally in the

1920s when the American Legion and the Daughters of the American

Revolution, “[c]oncern[ed] over the number of immigrants living in the

United States,” modified the then-unofficial Pledge to emphasize that “my

flag” meant the American flag. See Linda P. McKenzie, Note, The Pledge

of Allegiance: One Nation Under God?, 46 ARIZ. L. REV. 379, 387 (2004);

see also RICHARD J. ELLIS, TO THE FLAG: THE UNLIKELY HISTORY OF THE

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE 66 (2005) (noting that the central proponent of the

change “felt that the ambiguity of ‘my flag’ allowed devious or disloyal

immigrants to avoid pledging their allegiance to the United States”). 

6The majority asserts that “under God” conveys the secular principle of

“limited government” because it refers to “the Founding Fathers’ belief

that the people of this nation are endowed by their Creator with certain

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ty’s version of the facts, religion played at most only a minor

part in the effort to amend the Pledge. Nothing could be further from the truth. As anyone with a whit of common sense

will readily acknowledge, the word “God” carries predominantly, indeed exclusively, religious significance. While differentiating the United States from the Soviet Union was

certainly a factor motivating the amendment of the Pledge,

even that differentiation was based largely on the Soviets’

purported belief in atheism and America’s belief in religion,

and particularly in God. Indeed, the overwhelmingly predominant purpose motivating the amendment of the Pledge was

unqualifiedly religious in nature: Congress declared that

“true” Americans believe in God and sought to imprint this

belief on the minds of schoolchildren across the country. 

Were the majority to engage seriously with the history of

the Pledge, it would be compelled to recognize beyond any

doubt that the words “under God” were inserted with the

explicit and deliberate intention of endorsing a particular religious belief, of compelling nonadherents to that belief to pronounce the belief publicly or be labeled un-American, and of

instilling the particular religious view in America’s youth

through daily indoctrination in the public schools. 

For want of a respectable constitutional argument, the

majority seeks to persuade us that “[i]t is the 2002 statute . . .

that sets forth our current Pledge.” Maj. op. at 3894. That

statement is, at best, misleading: the “current Pledge” was

inalienable rights.” Maj. op. at 3873. The majority’s explanation of the

phrase bears a suspicious resemblance to the platform of the Tea Party

movement, which proclaims itself to be a “group of like-minded people

who desire our God given Individual Freedoms which were written out by

the Founding Fathers. We believe in Limited Government[!]” Tea Party

Nation, http://www.teapartynation.com (last visited February 26, 2010)

(emphasis added). But even the Tea Party has not suggested previously

that the phrase “under God” was intended to refer presciently to its platform. 

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enacted in 1954, and its language has not changed in any

respect since the words “under God” were added at that time.

As I shall explain, see infra Part III, the majority’s attempt to

use the 2002 legislation as the legal basis for the incorporation

of the two additional words into the Pledge in 1954 is patently

without merit and is contrary to logic, reason, and binding

Supreme Court law. The “reaffirmation” by the later Congress

does not in any way affect the constitutionality of the “under

God” amendment as recited by public schoolchildren in the

present or in any other circumstances. 

A. Religious Origins of the “Under God” Amendment

For most of its 117 year existence, the Pledge of Allegiance

existed, and was recited across the nation, in a purely secular

form. The overwhelmingly religious purpose driving the decision to amend the Pledge into its current form is apparent

from the earliest efforts to do so. Those efforts began in 1951,

when the Knights of Columbus, a “major Roman Catholic fraternal order,”

7

 adopted a resolution requiring that the words

“under God” be included in the Pledge of Allegiance when

said at organizational meetings.8 The following year, the

Supreme Council of the organization passed a resolution urging the United States Congress to adopt the Knights’ version

of the Pledge, and within a few months Representative Louis

Rabaut, a Catholic congressman from Michigan, sponsored a

bill to do just that.

That first bill, however, did not gain much traction, perhaps

because the group backing its adoption was composed of

Roman Catholics, who were, at the time, disdained as both

foreign and ignorant by many segments of American society.9

7EDWIN S. GAUSTAD, A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF RELIGION IN AMERICA

189 (1986). 

8

See JOHN W. BAER, THE PLEDGE oF ALLEGIANCE: A CENTENNIAL HISTORY,

1892-1992 at 62 (1992). 

9

See, e.g., JOHN T. MCGREEVY, CATHOLICISM AND AMERICAN FREEDOM: A

HISTORY 166-88 (2003) (describing the view of American intellectuals in

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No Catholic had been nominated for President of the United

States by a major political party until 1928, when the Catholicism of Al Smith, the first member of that religion to become

his party’s standard bearer, was a major issue in the presidential campaign. Smith lost the election to Herbert Hoover by

nearly twenty percentage points, and no other Catholic was

again nominated until after the Pledge had been amended.

Following Rabaut’s introduction of his bill, the Knights sent

a second, identical resolution to every member of the House

and Senate. ELLIS, supra note, at 131. Yet, “despite the

[Knights’] best efforts . . . the movement to have the ‘under

God’ clause added to the Pledge languished throughout

1953.” Id. at 132. Thus, the Catholic effort to place God in the

Pledge appeared to be dead. 

The next year, however, the words “under God” received

a full-throated endorsement from members of a more mainstream and popular Christian denomination — a major Protestant religion. On February 7, 1954, the Reverend George M.

Docherty, a highly regarded Presbyterian minister, delivered

a sermon on “the American way of life” to an august congregation at Washington’s prestigious New York Avenue Presbyterian Church: many members of Congress were present,

and seated in President Lincoln’s former pew were President

and Mrs. Eisenhower. See 100 Cong. Rec. 1700 (1954). Reverend Docherty seized this opportunity to encourage the

the 1950s that Catholicism and Catholic culture were anti-scientific and

anti-democratic); John M. Breen, Justice and Jesuit Legal Education: A

Critique, 36 LOY. U. CHI. L.J. 383, 405 n.93 (2005) (noting “the virulently

anti-Catholic” sentiment of the 1940s); Thomas C. Berg, Anti-Catholicism

and Modern Church-State Relations, 33 Loy. U. Chi. L.J. 121, 168-69

(2001) (noting that “explicit dislike of Catholicism” played an “overwhelming role in church-state debates . . . in the 1940s and 1950s”). For

arguments that anti-Catholicism is still a strong force in American culture,

see PHILIP JENKINS, THE NEW ANTI-CATHOLICISM: THE LAST ACCEPTABLE

PREJUDICE(2003); MARK S. MASSA, ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN AMERICA: THE LAST ACCEPTPREJUDICE (2003). 

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assembled national leaders to add the words “under God” to

the Pledge of Allegiance, arguing that such a phrase was necessary to distinguish America from “militantly atheistic communism,”10 and, more specifically, to distinguish the “JudaioChristian” beliefs governing this nation from the “secularized

Godless” philosophy that motivated our opponents in the

“theological war” in which we were engaged. Contrary to the

majority’s characterization of the purpose underlying the proposed insertion as predominantly secular, Reverend Docherty

explicitly denied that the phrase “under God” emphasized a

difference in political philosophies as the majority contends.

Rather, he said:

We face today a theological war. It is not basically

a conflict between two political philosophies —

Thomas Jefferson’s political democracy over against

Lenin’s communistic state. 

Nor is it a conflict fundamentally between two

economic systems[,] between, shall we say, Adam

Smith[’s] “Wealth of Nations” and Karl Marx[’s]

“Das Capital.” 

It is a fight for the freedom of the human personality. It is not simply, “Man’s inhumanity to man.” It

is Armageddon, a battle of the gods. It is the view of

man as it comes down to us from the JudaioChristian civilization in mortal combat against modern, secularized, godless humanity.

. . . [T]he pledge of allegiance . . . seems to me to

omit this theological implication that is inherent

within the “American Way of Life.” It should be

10All quotations from the sermon are from George M. Docherty, Pastor,

The New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Sermon Marking Lincoln

Sunday (Feb. 7, 1954), available at http://tinyurl.com/DochertySermon.

All emphases have been added. 

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“One nation, indivisible, Under God.” Once “Under

God,” then we can define what we mean by “liberty

and justice for all.” To omit the words “under God”

in the pledge of allegiance is to omit the definitive

character of the “American Way of Life.”

Diverging for a moment from his theological thesis, Reverend Docherty then paused to address those who “might assert

this [proposed alteration] to be a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution.” Reverend Docherty had at least

some specific critics in mind, seeing as when he had made a

similar proposal to amend the Pledge in a sermon two years

earlier “several of [his] colleagues” in the clergy “declared it

would violate the principle of separation of church and state.”

11

In the Reverend’s view, however, as expressed in his church

lecture to the President and the assembled members of Congress, it was “quite the opposite,” as the proposed insertion

would not create a “state church in this land such as exists in

England” nor would it discriminate between “the great Jewish

Community, and the people of the Moslem faith, and the myriad denominations of Christians in the land.”

12

The Reverend was mindful, however, that he omitted a

group from his list: “What then of the honest atheist?” he

asked rhetorically. Here his answer was simple:

11Kenneth Dole, Dr. Docherty Originated “Under God” in Flag

Pledge, WASH. POST, Mar. 12, 1955, at 10. 

12This statement demonstrates that the Reverend was a far better theologian than he was a constitutional scholar, as the Supreme Court had

explicitly held that the First Amendment prohibits more than simply the

official establishment of a state church or the discrimination between various sects of Judeo-Christianity. Almost six years to the day before

Docherty’s sermon, the Supreme Court had held that “[t]he ‘establishment

of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a

state nor the Federal Government . . . . can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.” Everson v. Bd.

of Educ. of Ewing, 330 U.S. 1, 15 (1947) (emphasis added). 

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[A]n atheistic American is a contradiction in

terms. . . . 

[T]hey really are spiritual parasites. . . . [They] are

living upon the accumulated spiritual capital of a

Judaio-Christian civilization, and at the same time,

deny the God who revealed the divine principles

upon which the ethics of this Country grow. . . . 

. . . . 

[I]f he denies the Christian ethic, [the atheist] falls

short of the American ideal of life. 

The Reverend’s central message was clear: the American way

of life “is defined by a fundamental belief in God. [It is a]

way of life that sees man, not as the ultimate outcome of a

mysterious concatenation of evolutionary process, but a sentient being created by God and seeking to know His will . . . .”

Only by adding the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance could that oath truly be a pledge “to the United States

of America.” 

The assembled legislators in Reverend Docherty’s pews

were enraptured by his sermon. One was so inspired that he

felt compelled to break the Sabbath in order to draft the historic bill amending the Pledge of Allegiance in time to introduce it the next morning: “The following day, one of

Docherty’s petitioners [sic], Representative Charles Oakman,

introduced a resolution in the House that would codify the

inclusion of ‘under God’ in the Pledge. Two days later, Senator Homer Ferguson presented an identical resolution to the Senate.”13 Both legislators explicitly stated that they introduced

13Brian Wheeler, Note, The Pledge of Allegiance in the Classroom and

the Court: An Epic Struggle over the Meaning of the Establishment Clause

of the First Amendment, 2008 B.Y.U. EDUC. & L. J. 281, 286 (footnote

omitted). 

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their proposed bills in direct response to Reverend Docherty’s

sermon. See 100 Cong. Rec. 7759 (Rep. Oakman); id. at 6231

(Sen. Ferguson). Later that same week, Representative

Rabaut, who had introduced the bill a year earlier that was

“the grandaddy of them all,” id. at 7758, took to the floor of

the House to comment on the inspiring impact of Docherty’s

“eloquently” delivered sermon. See id. at 1700. Indeed,

Docherty’s “sermon was so powerful that in its wake no fewer

than seventeen bills were introduced to incorporate God into

the Pledge of Allegiance.”

14

B. Congressional Enactment of the “Under God”

Amendment

The strong religious sentiment driving the amendment to

the Pledge only became more pietistic when the topic moved

from the pulpit into the halls of Congress. The discussion of

the proposed amendment could hardly be called a debate, as

no one stood in opposition,15 but a parade of legislators still

14Steven B. Epstein, Rethinking the Constitutionality of Ceremonial

Deism, 96 COLUM. L. REV. 2083, 2119 (1996) (citing MARK SILK, SPIRITUAL

POLITICS: RELIGION AND AMERICA SINCE WORLD WAR II 96 (1988)). All of

the tributes paid to Reverend Docherty caused at least one group to feel

slighted: “The [attention] drew a protest from Luke E. Hart, Supreme

Knight of the Knights of Columbus . . . who pointed out that the Knights

of Columbus was the first organization to use the modified pledge.” Who

Placed “Under God” in Pledge to the Flag? WASH. POST, Mar. 26, 1955,

at 8. 

15The closest thing to opposition came from Congressman Keating, who

“enthusiastically support[ed]” the Pledge amendment but cautioned that

“in the future we should tread very lightly in this field” out of respect for

the integrity of “American literature” and its “priceless gem[s] of American prose.” 100 Cong. Rec. 7760-61. Congressman Keating’s statement

reflects the fact that Francis Bellamy’s son, who was Keating’s constituent, strenuously opposed the effort to amend the Pledge his father had

authored on the ground that his father would have objected to such a clear

conflation of church and state. Id. at 7761; see also ELLIS, supra note 5,

at 121, 135. Bellamy’s great-granddaughter later echoed this sentiment,

stating that her “great-grandfather . . . . [was a] deeply religious man, [but]

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rose to offer spirited, deeply religious statements in support of

the proposal. While it cannot fully recapture the fervent and

undeniable religiosity so evident in the pages of the Congressional Record, even the limited report of the discussion that

follows is extremely revealing. In an effort at completeness,

this report includes statements from each and every legislator

who commented on the proposed Pledge amendment in the

Congressional Record.

16

The discussion in Congress began five days after Reverend

Docherty’s sermon, when Congressman Rabaut made his way

to the floor of the House of Representatives to declare that

“[w]ithout these [new] words . . . the pledge ignores a definitive factor in the American way of life and that factor is belief

in God.” 100 Cong. Rec. 1700 (emphasis added). In the Congressman’s view, anyone who did not wholeheartedly endorse

that “belief in God” was not a true American. As for American atheists, Congressman Rabaut was unsparing in his condemnation:

From the root of atheism stems the evil weed of

communism and its branches of materialism and

political dictatorship. Unless we are willing to affirm

our belief in the existence of God and His creatorcreature relation to man, we drop man himself to the

significance of a grain of sand and open the floodgates to tyranny and oppression. 

was also a strict believer in the separation of church and state . . . . He

intended the pledge to be a unifying statement for [our] children. By

adding the phrase ‘under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, Congress . . . . divided our nation further rather than uniting its citizens.” Sally

Wright, Letter to the Editor, Writing the Pledge: The Original Intent, N.Y.

TIMES, July 14, 2002, at C14. 

16The only legislator not quoted in the text is Congressman Eberharter,

author of the 1942 Act that first codified the original Pledge, who rose

only for a moment to express his “wholehearted support” for the proposed

alteration. 100 Cong. Rec. 7758. 

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Id. (emphases added). At the close of the congressman’s jeremiad against non-believers, he let the following words, lifted

from Reverend Docherty’s sermon, echo through the hall: “An

atheistic American . . . is a contradiction in terms.” Id.

(emphasis added). 

Once the seventeen separate House bills seeking to amend

the Pledge were consolidated and favorably reported by the

Judiciary Committee, the House proceeded to a floor discussion during which many congressmen rose to express their

views. Congressman Angell, who had authored one of the

many bills, said, “there should be embodied in the pledge our

allegiance and faith in the Almighty God. The addition of the

words ‘under God’ will accomplish this worthy purpose.” Id.

at 6919 (emphases added). Representative Pillion, author of a

separate bill, gave a statement “in support of any and all bills

that would serve to recognize the power and the universality

of God in our pledge of allegiance. . . . The inclusion of God

in our pledge would acknowledge the dependence of our people, and our Government upon the moral direction and the

restraints of religion.” Id. at 7590-91 (emphases added). Congressman Bolton, author of yet another of the bills, stated that:

The significant import of our action today . . . is that

we are officially recognizing once again this

Nation’s adherence to our belief in a divine spirit,

and that henceforth millions of our citizens will be

acknowledging this belief every time they pledge

allegiance to our flag. 

Id. at 7757 (emphases added). Congressman Brooks rose to

declare that the proposed law “recognizes that all things

which we have in the way of life, liberty, constitutional government, and rights of man are held by us under the divine

benediction of the Almighty.” Id. at 7758 (emphases added).

Congressman Keating noted that: 

[W]e cannot too often be reminded of the spiritual

values which alone have permanence . . . . When the

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forces of anti-God and antireligion so persistently

spread their dangerous and insidious propaganda, it

is wholesome for us to have constantly brought to

our minds the fact that . . . it is the strength of the

spirit . . . to which we must ultimately look for salvation . . . . 

Id. at 7760 (emphasis added). Congressman Oakman proudly

introduced into the record a letter from a constituent praising

his authorship of one of the proposed bills, which described

the bill as “a realistic recognition of the theological and philosophical truth — the existence of a Supreme Being.” Id. Congressman O’Hara observed that “what we are engaged in

today is a sacred mission” and that in amending the Pledge

the legislators were achieving a “victory for God.” Id. at 7762

(emphases added). Congressman Wolverton commented that

the proposed amendment “sets forth in a mere two words, but,

very strong and meaningful words, the fundamental faith and

belief of America in the overruling providence of God and our

dependence at all times upon Him.” Id. at 7763 (emphasis

added). Congressman Rodino quoted scripture in order to best

express “the spirit” of the proposed law, citing David the

Psalmist for the proposition that Americans reciting the

Pledge (including the public schoolchildren who were

expected to recite it every day in the classroom, see infra Part

II.C) “shall say to the Lord: Thou art my protector and my

refuge: my God, in Him will I trust.” Id. at 7764. Congressman Bolton rose to observe that the legislation “comes at a

time in the world when we do well to once more publicly and

officially affirm our faith.” Id. (emphasis added). At the close

of the discussion, the final congressman to speak was Representative Addonizio, who said:

We, who take the pledge of allegiance to the flag

of the United States of America and raise our eyes

toward that symbol of our faith, should bear in mind

that our citizenship is of no real value to us . . .

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unless we can open our souls before God and before

Him conscientiously say, “I am an American.”

Id. at 7765 (emphases added). 

The majority asserts that “[t]he words ‘under God’ were

added as a description of ‘one Nation’ primarily to reinforce

the idea that our nation is founded upon the concept of a limited government, in stark contrast to . . . communist forms of

government.” Maj. op. at 3909 (emphasis added). In my colleagues’ view, any religious purpose associated with the

amendment of the Pledge was merely incidental to the patriotic, anti-Communist purpose driving the law. However, had

my colleagues actually acknowledged the existence of the

detailed historical record instead of ignoring it, they could not

have failed to recognize that their historical assertion is precisely backward: the anti-Communist sentiment associated

with the amendment was clearly secondary to the overwhelming and predominant religious purpose motivating the amendment. For one thing, the majority’s revisionist account ignores

the fact that much of the anti-Soviet sentiment associated with

the amendment was itself driven in large part by the congressmen’s religious disagreement with the Soviets’ purported

atheism. For example, in rising to endorse the amendment,

Congressman Wolverton stated that a virtue of the proposed

amendment was that it “plainly denies the atheistic and materialistic concepts of communism with its attendant subservience of the individual.” 100 Cong. Rec. 7762 (emphasis

added). Indeed, the original author of the bill to amend the

Pledge stated that “the evil weed of communism and its

branches of materialism and political dictatorship” stems

“[f]rom the root of atheism.” Id. at 1700 (emphasis added).

The majority’s revisionism is further refuted by that same

original author, Congressman Rabaut, who explicitly stated:

“You may argue from dawn to dusk about differing political,

economic, and social systems, but the fundamental issue

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nist Russia is a belief in Almighty God.”

17 Id. (emphases

added). This was seconded by Congressman Brooks, who

declared that “One thing separates free peoples of the Western

World from the rabid Communist, and this one thing is a

belief in God.” Id. at 7758 (emphases added). Indeed, even the

official House Report accompanying the bill demonstrates

that the desire to underscore a political philosophy of antiCommunism was at most an ancillary aim of the bill, as it was

listed as a second and separate rationale following the legislation’s primary stated rationale: to “acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon the moral

directions of the Creator.” See H.R. REP. NO. 83-1693 at 2

(1954), reprinted in 1954 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2339, 2340. Moreover, even that ancillary rationale stresses the religious underpinning of the anti-Soviet sentiment, as the Report goes on to

state: “At the same time, [the bill] would serve to deny the

atheistic and materialistic concepts of communism . . . . ” Id.,

1954 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2340 (emphasis added). 

After all of the congressmen made their intentions clear and

the House moved to adopt its final bill, discussion opened

across the Capitol in the well of the Senate. Initially, the Senate version of the bill stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where it “seemed dead” because some “senators had

concerns about the resolution’s implications for the separation

17In a hapless attempt to find some iota of support for its “limited government” theory in the legislative history, the majority quotes a statement

of Congressman Rabaut that was included in the House Report. Maj. op.

at 3910. The majority suggests that when Congressman Rabaut discussed

“our way of life and its origins,” he was referring to the concept of “limited government.” If his explicit statements on the House floor were not

enough to establish that he was instead referring to a belief in God, the

sentence in the House Report that immediately follows his statement

would make that absolutely clear: “Since our flag is symbolic of our

Nation, its constitutional government and the morality of our people, the

committee believes it most appropriate that the concept of God be

included in the recitations of the pledge of allegiance to the flag.” H.R.

REP. No. 83-1693 at 3 (1954) (emphasis added), reprinted in 1954

U.S.C.C.A.N. 2339, 2341. 

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of church and state.” ELLIS, supra note 5, at 134; see also id.

at 257 n.40. However, in light of the zealous and unanimous

parade of congressmen who endorsed the bill in the House,

the Senate was forced to consider the matter. The senators

who remarked on the bill from the floor of that chamber were

fewer in number,18 though no less fervent in their religiosity

than their counterparts in the House. Senator Wiley, rising to

congratulate Senator Ferguson for authoring the Senate bill,

said that “in these days of great challenge to America, one can

hardly think of a more inspiring symbolic deed than for America to reaffirm its faith in divine providence, in the process of

restating its devotion to the Stars and Stripes.” 100 Cong.

Rec. 5915 (emphasis added). When the final resolution was

reported to the Senate, Senator Ferguson explained its purpose as follows: “the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag which

stands for the United States of America should recognize the

Creator who we really believe is in control of the destinies of

this great Republic.” Id. at 6348 (emphasis added).

Evidence of the legislation’s overt religious purpose was

not, as the majority claims, limited to individual statements

proclaiming the “religious motives of the legislators who

enacted the law.” Maj. op. at 3911 n.27 (citing Bd. of Educ.

v. Mergens, 496 U.S. 226, 249 (1990) (plurality opinion of

O’Connor, J.)). To the contrary, the House and Senate

Reports accompanying the proposed bills also bear testament

to the new Pledge’s indisputably religious purpose. The Senate Report stated that one of the reasons for adopting the

“under God” amendment was its recognition of “the fundamental truth that a government deriving its power from the

consent of the governed must look to God for divine leadership.” S. REP. NO. 83-1287 at 2 (1954) (emphasis added),

reprinted in 100 Cong. Rec. 6231. The House Report emphasized “the belief that the human person is important because

18Unlike the House, the Senate received and considered only one bill

proposing that the words “under God” be inserted into the Pledge. See

S.J.R. 126, 83rd Cong. (1954). 

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he was created by God and endowed by Him with certain

inalienable rights which no civil authority may usurp. The

inclusion of God in our pledge therefore would further

acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon the moral directions of the Creator.” H.R. REP.

No. 83-1693 at 1-2 (1954) (emphasis added), reprinted in

1954 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2339, 2340. 

With these official reports attached to the bills, both the

Senate and the House unanimously adopted the new Pledge

by voice vote and sent it to President Eisenhower for his

approval. The culmination of the legislative proceedings was

carefully timed so that the joint resolution could be approved

in time for the President to sign it on Flag Day, four short

months after Reverend Docherty’s sermon. See, e.g., 100

Cong. Rec. 7759 (discussing scheduling of legislation in relation to Flag Day). And so it was that on June 14, 1954, President Eisenhower officially added his signature to the bill

amending the Pledge of Allegiance, thereby changing fundamentally the nature and purpose of the oath. After doing so,

he proclaimed in his signing statement:

From this day forward, the millions of our school

children will daily proclaim in every city and town,

every village and rural school house, the dedication

of our Nation and our people to the Almighty. To

anyone who truly loves America, nothing could be

more inspiring than to contemplate this rededication

of our youth, on each school morning, to our country’s true meaning.19

Once the bill was signed into law, Senator Ferguson, Congressman Rabaut, the sixteen other sponsors of the “under

19Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Include the Words

“Under God” in the Pledge to the Flag, PUB. PAPERS 563 (June 14, 1954)

(emphases added), available at http://tinyurl.com/PubPapersUnderGod,

reprinted in 100 Cong. Rec. 8618. 

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God” resolutions, and the Senate Chaplain gathered before an

assembled audience at the Capitol and a national audience

watching on television for what Walter Cronkite called a

“stirring event.”

20 As described in the Congressional Record,

the legislators who amended the Pledge turned toward “the

believer’s flag[,] the witness of a great nation’s faith” and

recited the newly minted Pledge of Allegiance to “our Nation

[and] to the Almighty.” 100 Cong. Rec. 8617. “Then, appropriately, as the flag was raised a bugle rang out with the

familiar strains of ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers!’ ” Id.:

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war, 

With the cross of Jesus going on before. 

Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe; 

Forward into battle see His banners go! 

C. The 1954 Amendment and America’s Schoolchildren

The foregoing history of the process by which the Pledge

was amended — beginning in the pews of New York Avenue

Presbyterian Church, continuing through speech after speech

in the House and Senate declaring the need for America to

“affirm our belief in the existence of God,” id. at 1700, followed by the President’s remarks regarding schoolchildren

daily proclaiming their dedication to the Almighty, and concluding with the triumphant playing of Onward Christian Soldiers on the Capitol steps to baptize the newly amended

national oath — demonstrates beyond any shadow of a doubt

that the purpose driving the amendment was predominantly,

and indeed overwhelmingly, religious in nature. But there is

more. Not only was the message underlying the new Pledge

clear — “true” Americans believe in God and non-believers

are decisively un-American — but so too was its intended

audience: America’s schoolchildren.21

20The Morning Show (CBS television broadcast June 14, 1954),

reprinted in 100 Cong. Rec. 8617. 

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The legislators who set out to insert the words “under God”

into the Pledge of Allegiance were fully aware that in 1954

the original Pledge was a commonplace scholastic ritual.22

Indeed, a primary rationale for inserting the explicitly religious language into the Pledge of Allegiance, as opposed to

into some other national symbol or verse, was that the Pledge

was an ideal vehicle for the indoctrination of the country’s

youth. The amendment’s chief proponents in Congress were

not at all bashful about their intentions. Speaking from the

well of the Senate, Senator Wiley endorsed the bill by saying,

“What better training for our youngsters could there be than

to have them, each time they pledge allegiance to Old Glory,

reassert their belief, like that of their fathers and their fathers

before them, in the all-present, all-knowing, all-seeing, allpowerful Creator.” Id. at 5915 (emphases added). Senator

Ferguson, who authored the Senate bill, agreed that “we

should remind the Boy Scouts, the Girl Scouts, and the other

young people of America, who take [the] pledge of allegiance

to the flag more often than do adults, that it is not only a

pledge of words but also of belief.” Id. at 6348 (emphasis

added). In the House, Congressman Rabaut, the original

author of the first bill to amend the Pledge, declared that

“from their earliest childhood our children must know the real

meaning of America,” a country whose “way of life . . . sees

gious Yale graduate who authored a highly influential book entitled God

and Man at Yale. See WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, GOD AND MAN AT YALE (Regnery, 1951). Buckley subsequently became an intellectual leader of the conservative political movement and a prominent Catholic layman, who died

only last year. 

22Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, a “coordinated national propaganda

campaign,” envisioned by Bellamy, the Pledge’s author, and carried out

by various educational and civic organizations, transformed the Pledge

into “a defining symbol of national patriotism.” ELLIS, supra note 5, at 79;

see generally id. at 50-80. Because this campaign followed an earlier

movement at the turn of the century to put a “flag over every schoolhouse,” and later in every classroom, see id. at 2-9, by the time Congress

turned its attention to amending the Pledge in 1954, regular recitation of

the Pledge by schoolchildren across America was a common occurrence.

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man as a sentient being created by God and seeking to know

His will.” Id. at 1700 (emphases added). His colleague, Congressman Angell, argued that “the schoolchildren of America” should understand that the Pledge of Allegiance

“pledge[s] our allegiance and faith in the Almighty God.” Id.

at 6919 (emphases added). Similarly, Congressman O’Hara

noted that the new Pledge’s “acknowledgment that God is the

foundation of our Nation will be of incalculable value, all

through the years, of ever keeping vividly before our . . .

children[,] who from earliest childhood[ ] pledge their allegiance to the flag, that the real source of our strength in the

future, as in the past, is God.” Id. at 7763 (emphases added).

Indeed, the last words said before the House passed the bill

inserting “under God” into the Pledge emphasized “the millions of school children who daily repeat the pledge of allegiance.” Id. at 7766 (emphasis added). And of course, when

President Eisenhower signed the law amending the Pledge, he

declared that “[f]rom this day forward, the millions of our

school children will daily proclaim in every city and town,

every village and rural school house, the dedication of our

Nation and our people to the Almighty.”

23 Id. at 8618 (emphases added). These statements reflect the unanimous expectation on the part of both houses of Congress and the President

of the United States that the new religious version of the

Pledge would be recited regularly by “the schoolchildren of

America.” Id. at 6919. 

Nor was it only the federal government that promoted the

newly amended Pledge through legislation. At the time Congress first considered the amendment to the Pledge, only six

states — Delaware, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey,

23The President’s words echoed the sentiments of his pastor, Reverend

Docherty, who four months earlier had stated in his sermon proposing the

amendment to the Pledge that the idea “came in a flash one day . . . when

[his] children came home from school . . . [and described] what happened

at school when they arrived there in the morning.” Docherty, supra note

10, at 4. 

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Rhode Island, and Washington — had statutes requiring students to recite the Pledge in school,24 even though the Pledge

had, at that point, existed for over sixty years and had been

“a defining symbol of national patriotism” for over three decades. See ELLIS, supra note 5, at 79. However, once Congress

inserted the words “under God” into the Pledge in 1954, the

number of states statutorily providing for its recitation skyrocketed: Within a few years of the congressional amendment, nine state legislatures passed laws either requiring or

encouraging recitation of the Pledge in school with the newly

inserted words “under God.”

25 A steady march of legislatures

24See Act of Mar. 15, 1915, ch. 71, 1915 Wash. Sess. Laws 246; Act

of April 15, 1925, ch. 180, 34 Del. Laws 440 (1925); Act of Apr 16.,

1932, ch. 1927, 1932 R.I. Acts & Resolves 227; Act of May 2, 1932, ch.

145, 1932 N.J. Laws 260, amended by Act of Apr. 21, 1944, ch. 212, 1944

N.J. Laws 750; Act of May 13, 1935, ch. 258, 1935 Mass. Acts 306; Act

of Dec. 28, 1953, ch. 26 § 8, 1953 Miss. Laws 120. 

A number of other states had laws prior to 1954 that required students

to be taught proper respect for the flag. See Act of Jul. 10, 1935, 1935 Ill.

Laws. 1345; Act of Apr. 5, 1927, ch. 85, 1927 Neb. Laws 253. Others still

had statutes requiring students to perform a “flag salute.” See Act of Apr.

22, 1898, ch. 481, 1898 N.Y. Laws 1191; Act of Mar. 7, 1907, ch. 319,

1907 Kan. Sess. Laws 492; Act of Apr. 10, 1918, ch. 75, 1918 Md. Laws

121; Honoring Flag of U.S., ch. 164, 1923 Colo. Sess. Laws 550. That

salute, however, was designed in 1890 by George Balch and was distinct

from Bellamy’s pledge of allegiance. See generally ELLIS, supra note 5, at

38-43; see also 100 Cong. Rec. 7761. In fact, New York, which in 1898

became the first state to pass a statute requiring a flag salute, allowed for

any one of five different pledges of allegiance to be recited along with the

salute, only the last of which was Bellamy’s. ELLIS, supra note 5, at 54.

Notably, none of the five pledges contained any reference to God or to

religion. Id.

25The first states to act were those whose preexisting school-pledge statutes were rendered out of date by Congress’s amendment. See Act of June

24, 1954, ch. 83, 1954 N.J. Laws 464; Adding Words “Under God” to

Salute to Flag, ch. 51, 51 Del. Laws 66 (1957); Act of Mar. 23, 1960, ch.

391, 1960 Miss. Laws 618; Flag Exercises, Salute, National Anthem, ch.

238, 1961 Wash. Sess. Laws 2066. But see Act of June 14, 1977, ch. 333,

1977 Mass. Acts 345 (inserting “under God” over Governor’s veto); Act

of May 20, 1981, ch. 282, 1981 R.I. Pub. Laws 1102. 

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followed suit so that today all but seven states statutorily provide for the teacher-led daily recitation of the “under God”

version of the Pledge.26 As the proponents of the “under God”

Florida, New York, California, Idaho, and Wisconsin, however, were

inspired by Congress’s addition of the words “under God” to enact their

very first school-pledge statutes quickly on the heels of Congress’s

amendment. See Patriotic Programs, Rules, and Regulations, ch. 29764,

sec. 47, § 230.45, 1955 Fla. Laws 390; Act of Mar. 23, 1956, ch. 177,

1956 N.Y. Laws 775; Act of May 1, 1961, ch. 254, 1961 Cal. Stat. 1201;

National Flag and Colors, National Anthem, “America,” ch. 13, § 177,

1963 Idaho Sess. Laws 116; Act of May 23, 1963, ch. 65, sec. 2,

§ 40.47(1)(b), 1963 Wis. Sess. Laws 57. 

26Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, Vermont, and Wyoming

do not have any statutes mentioning the national Pledge of Allegiance, nor

do the District of Columbia or the commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The

remainder of the states either require or encourage the daily recitation of

the religious version of the Pledge in public schools. See ALA. CODE § 16-

43-5 (2001); ALASKA STAT. § 14.03.130 (2008); ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-506

(2002); ARK. CODE ANN. § 6-16-108 (2007); CAL. EDUC. CODE §§ 52720,

52730 (West 2006); COLO. REV. STAT. § 22-1-106 (2006); CONN. GEN.

STAT. ANN. § 10-230 (West 2002); DEL. CODE Ann. tit. 14 § 4105 (2007);

FLA. STAT. ANN. § 1003.44 (West 2009); GA. CODE ANN. § 20-2-310

(2005); IDAHO CODE ANN. § 33-1602 (2008); 105 ILL. COMP. STAT. ANN.

5/27-3 (West 2006); IND. CODE ANN. § 20-30-5-0.5 (West 2007); KAN.

STAT. ANN. § 72-5308 (West 2008); KY. REV. STAT. ANN. § 158.175 (West

2006); LA. REV. STAT. ANN. § 17:2115 (2001); MD. CODE ANN., EDUC. § 7-

105 (West 2002); MASS. GEN. LAWS ch. 71, § 69 (2006); MINN. STAT.

§ 121A.11 (2008); MISS. CODE ANN. § 37-13-7 (2007); MO. REV. STAT.

§ 171.021 (Supp. 2008); MONT. CODE ANN. § 20-7-133 (2007); NEV. REV.

STAT. § 389.040 (2007); N.H. REV. STAT. ANN. § 194:15-c (2008); N.J.

STAT. ANN. § 18A:36-3 (West 1999); N.M. STAT. § 22-5-4.5 (Supp. 2008);

N.Y. EDUC. LAW § 802 (McKinney 2000); N.C. GEN. STAT. §§ 115C47(29a), 115-238.29F, 116-69.1, 116-235 (2007); N.D. CENT. CODE

§ 15.1-19-03.1 (2003); OHIO REV. CODE ANN. § 3313.602 (West 2005);

OKLA. STAT. tit. 70, § 1210.229-6 (2002 & Supp. 2008); ORE. REV. STAT.

§ 339.875 (2007); 24 PA. CONS. STAT. ANN. § 7-771 (West 1992); R.I.

GEN. LAWS §§ 16-20-4, -22-11 (2001); S.C. CODE ANN. § 59-1-455 (2004);

S.D. CODIFIED LAWS § 13-24-17.2 (2004); TENN. CODE ANN. § 49-6-1001

(2002); TEX. EDUC. CODE ANN. § 25.082 (Vernon 2006); UTAH CODE ANN.

§ 53A-13-101.6 (West 2004); VA. CODE ANN. § 22.1-202 (2006); WASH.

REV. CODE ANN. § 28A.230.140 (West 2006); W. VA. CODE ANN. § 18-5-

15b (West 2002); WIS. STAT. § 118.06 (2008). 

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amendment stated early on, such “widespread support [for]

the [new Pledge] . . . must bear testimony to a religious

revival of significance.”

27

27Clayton Knowles, Big Issue in D.C.: The Oath of Allegiance, N.Y.

TIMES, May 23, 1954, at E7 (emphasis added). 

Indeed, a number of states incorporate their school-pledge requirements

into statutes that simultaneously endorse school prayer. Kentucky provides that, “as an affirmation of the freedom of religion in this country . . .

a local school district may authorize the recitation of the traditional Lord’s

prayer and the pledge of allegiance to the flag in public elementary

schools.” Act of Apr. 9, 1980, ch. 304, 1980 Ky. Acts 1029 (codified at

KY. REV. STAT. ANN. § 158.175 (West 2006)). Until recently, New Hampshire had a nearly identical statutory provision. See Act of June 3, 1975,

ch. 225, 1975 N.H. LAWS 195, amended by Act of May 18, 2002, ch. 77,

2002 N.H. LAWS 501 (codified at N.H. REV. STAT. ANN. §§ 194:15-a, -c

(2008)). Similarly, North Dakota incorporates its pledge-recitation

requirement into a statute setting aside time for silent prayer. See Act of

Apr. 5, 2001, ch. 187, 2001 N.D. Laws 697 (codified at N.D. CENT. CODE

§ 15.1-19-03.1 (2003)). Louisiana has passed multiple acts over the past

thirty years adding and altering school prayer provisions to a statute that

also provides “for group recitation of the ‘Pledge of Allegiance to the

Flag.’ ” See Act of July 23, 1980, ch. 519, 1980 La. Acts 1242, amended

by 1987 La. Acts 1530, amended by 1989 La. Acts 1204, amended by

1992 La. Acts 919, amended by 1999 La. Acts 2527, amended by 2002 La.

Acts 1250 (codified at LA. REV. STAT. ANN. § 17:2115 (2001 & Supp.

2008)). 

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At the forefront of that revival was the state of California.

While many other states, perhaps preoccupied with more

pressing legislative business, took a decade or more to

endorse state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the religious version of the Pledge in public schools, California did

so in 1961, becoming one of the first states to adopt a schoolpledge statute after Congress inserted the words “under God.”

28

California’s Pledge-recitation bill was introduced on January

12, 1961, following an opening prayer in the California State

Assembly to “Jesus Christ, our Lord and Redeemer.”

29 Some

legislators, apparently concerned over the religious content

recently inserted into the Pledge by Congress, attempted to

amend the proposed state bill in order to allow “any pupil” to

be “excused from giving the pledge” if doing so “conflicts

with [his] religious beliefs.”

30 However, even this modest protection for religious minorities was removed from the final

version of the bill, over the dissenting votes of seven members.31

Thus, on May 1, 1961, when the final version of the bill was

signed by Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown,32 California

joined those states ensuring by force of law that the statedirected, teacher-led recitation of the “under God” version of

the Pledge of Allegiance would occur daily in classrooms

throughout the state. 

28See Act of May 1, 1961, ch. 254, 1961 Cal. Stat. 1201. Florida and

New York were the only states to precede California in enacting new

school-pledge statutes following the congressional amendment. See supra

note 22. 

291961 CAL. LEG. ASSEMB. DAILY J. 223; see also Assemb. B. 292, 1961

Reg. (Gen.) Sess. (Cal. 1961). 

30See Assemb. B. 292, 1961 Reg. (Gen.) Sess. (Cal. 1961) (as amended

by S. Comm. on Education, Mar. 29, 1961, and again on Apr. 6, 1961).

31See Assemb. B. 292, 1961 Reg. (Gen.) Sess. (Cal. 1961) (as amended

by Sen. on Apr. 11, 1961); see also 1961 CAL. LEG. SEN. DAILY J. 1559;

1961 CAL. LEG. ASSEMB. DAILY J. 2552. 

32Not to be confused with the one-time seminarian and subsequent (and

perhaps future) governor, Pat Brown’s son, Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr.

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D. The 2002 “Reaffirmation”

Almost immediately after its amendment, the new Pledge

was the subject of numerous constitutional challenges. See

infra note 102. Those challenges continued consistently over

the following decades, but met with little success until June

26, 2002, when this court held that the state-directed recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance

in California’s public schools violated the First Amendment.

Newdow I, 292 F.3d at 612. In response to that constitutional

ruling, lawmakers immediately took to the floor in both

houses of Congress to condemn this court’s decision. Among

them was Senator Robert Byrd, who proudly announced that

he was “the only Member of Congress today, bar none, in

either body, who was a Member of the House on June 7,

1954, when the words ‘under God’ were included in the

Pledge of Allegiance.” 107 Cong. Rec. S6103. His comments,

like those of the other Senators who spoke that day, made

clear that his outrage over the Newdow I decision was not

based on any devotion to principles of limited government:

I, for one, am not going to stand for this country’s

being ruled by a bunch of atheists. If they do not like

it, let them leave. They do not have to worship my

God, but I will worship my God and no atheist and

no court is going to tell me I cannot do so whether

at a school commencement or anywhere else.

Id.

That same afternoon, the Senate passed a resolution

expressing its “strong[ ] disapprov[al]” of the Newdow I decision. S. Res. 292, 107th Cong. (2002), reprinted in 107 Cong.

Rec. S6105. The reason for that disapproval is readily apparent from the statements offered in the resolution’s support.

Senator Robert Bennet, for example, announced that

“[r]egardless of what the courts may say, the American people

still trust in God. . . . [I]t is a correct statement of how we

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feel, and it belongs in the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag.”

107 Cong. Rec. S6106 (emphasis added). Numerous other

senators expressed similar views,33 including Senator Sam

Brownback, who remarked upon the superiority of the United

States, “a nation that honors God,” to North Korea, “a country

that does not honor God.” Id. at S6109. 

Although the majority asserts that “virtually all of the

members of Congress agreed” that we had misunderstood its

purpose when we decided Newdow I, maj. op. at 3913

(emphasis added), not a single Senator expressed the view

that our court had misunderstood the 1954 Congress’s purpose for enacting the “under God” amendment. Several Senators, however, explicitly stated their disagreement with any

interpretation of the Constitution under which that religious

purpose would be impermissible. For example, Senator

George Allen declared that the Pledge “should remain in our

schools” because “the purpose of the Establishment Clause .

. . was not to expunge religion or matters of faith from all

aspects of public life.” Id. at S6108. Similarly, Senator John

Ensign urged the Senate “to take it upon itself to correct what

the Ninth Circuit has done” because “we need to reestablish

in this country what this document — the Constitution of the

United States — really says and really was about.” Id. at S6102.34

33See also id. at S6107 (statement of Sen. Burns) (“We are a nation

founded upon the acknowledgment of a Creator.”); id. at S6112 (statement

of Sen. Smith) (“There are countless more examples of religion in American public life. . . . . For this court to single out the pledge for including

the phrase ‘One Nation, Under God,’ is simply incredible.”). 

34See also id. at S6104 (statement of Sen. Sessions) (“[Newdow I] is a

shocking culmination of a decade-long trend of liberal activist courts that

have been misreading the first amendment of the Constitution.”); Id.

S6106 (statement of Sen. Bennett) (“The word ‘God’ is sufficiently universal and nonspecific as to allow those who use it to ascribe any quality,

any gender, any doctrine, any position that those people might wish to

ascribe to it. It is inconceivable to me that the Ninth Circuit should suggest

that the generic term ‘God’ is somehow endorsement of a specific religion.”); id. at S6109 (statement of Sen. Brownback) (“[T]he Establishment

Clause is clearly misinterpreted by the entire legal system today.”). 

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Recognizing these strong sentiments, Senator Trent Lott

stated when he introduced the resolution that additional measures should be taken to reaffirm the actions of the 1954 Congress:

[F]or our children to be allowed to invoke God’s

blessing on our country in the Pledge of Allegiance

is certainly something we want to do. 

If there is ever a time when we need this additional blessing, perhaps it is now more than ever in

our lifetimes. . . . . 

In [this resolution], we state that we disapprove of

the decision by the Ninth Circuit . . . . 

Beyond that, to further make it clear, the Senate

should consider a recodification of the language that

was passed in 1954. There was no uncertainty or

ambiguity about what was done in 1954. The Congress, in fact the American people, spoke through

their Congress. We should make it clear once again.

107 Cong. Rec. S6105 (emphasis added).35

35Each of the Senators quoted in the above paragraph and the one preceding it, including in footnotes 33 and 34, co-sponsored the Pledge

recodification statute, which was passed by the Senate the day after these

statements were made. See 107 Cong. Rec. S6225 (listing co-sponsors).

Other Senators went even further in expressing a religious basis for their

disapproval of Newdow I and their approval of including the phrase “under

God” in the Pledge. For example, Senator Joseph Lieberman stated that it

might become necessary “to amend the Constitution to make clear that . . .

we are one Nation because of our faith in God, [so] that the American

people, children, forever forward will be able to stand and recite the

pledge.” Id. at S6091 (emphasis added). Similarly, Senator Mary Landrieu

stated that “we as a nation stand under God, acknowledging His presence

. . . . [W]e collectively as a nation will in no way back down in acknowledging His presence and His divine creation.” Id. at S6107. 

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And so they did. The next morning, Senator Byrd called the

Senate to order and invited the Reverend Lloyd J. Ogilvie, the

Senate Chaplain, to lead “[t]he prayer to Almighty God, the

supreme Judge of the world.” 107 Cong. Rec. S6177. In his

invocation, Reverend Ogilvie declared that “[t]here is no separation between God and State,” and proclaimed God as the

“ultimate Sovereign of our Nation.” Id. He then described the

Pledge as an expression of America’s trust in God: “It is with

reverence that in a moment we will repeat the words of commitment to trust You which are part of our Pledge of Allegiance to our flag: ‘One Nation under God, indivisible.’ ” Id.

After the members of the Senate recited the Pledge, Senator

Tom Daschle offered the chaplain both thanks and agreement:

“I know I speak for all of our colleagues in thanking Chaplain

Ogilvie for his wonderful prayer this morning. He spoke for

all of us.” Id.

The Senate then considered a recodification bill, entitled

“An Act To reaffirm the reference to one Nation under God

in the Pledge of Allegiance,” later that day. 107 Cong. Rec.

S6225.36 The recodification bill served two ends: to express

Not one Senator repudiated the religious motivations of the 1954 lawmakers; indeed, more than one explicitly embraced them. Id. at S6102

(statement of Sen. Daschle) (“We added the language, ‘under God,’ in

1954. Then-President Dwight Eisenhower said: ‘In this way, we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and

future; in this way, we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons

which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and

war.’ I agree with President Eisenhower.”); id. at S6109 (statement of Sen.

Brownback) (“I thank those sincere leaders who in 1954 sought to reaffirm . . . our ‘firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence.’ ”); id.

at S6237 (statement of Sen. Allard) (“When President Eisenhower signed

the law adding ‘under God’ to the pledge, . . . . [h]e was affirming that

this nation has . . . consistently and thoroughly incorporated belief in and

submission to God.”). 

36While the Pledge was the primary focus of the bill, it also contained

a section, entitled “reaffirming that God remains in our motto,” that reenacted the statute declaring “In God we trust” to be the National Motto. See

Pub. L. No. 107-293, 116 Stat. 2057, 2060-61 (2002). 

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the approval of the 2002 Congress of the 1954 Congress’s

inclusion of “under God” in the Pledge, and to express its disapproval of the constitutional interpretation of the First

Amendment by this court in Newdow I.

37 It did not make any

change to the content of the Pledge or offer any different purpose for its adoption than the religious purpose that motivated

the 1954 Congress. In support of the legislation, Senator Jeff

Sessions made clear that he considered the Pledge an “expression of faith,” that he approved wholeheartedly of what the

1954 Congress had done, and that the Senate should again

express its approval of the inclusion of God in the Pledge. He

stated that he disagreed not only with Newdow I, but with

other limitations on religious expression in public schools:

I am a cosponsor and helped draft this legislation.

I would say this: This is not an itty bitty issue. This

is a big issue. The Congress and States and cities

have been expressing a desire to have, and be

allowed to have, an expression of faith in the public

life of America. The courts have been on a trend for

decades now to constrict that. . . . . 

The Supreme Court . . . . has cracked down on

some very small instances of public expression of

faith. Our courts have made decisions such as constraining a valedictorian’s address at a high school.

Certainly our prayer in schools has been rigorously

constricted or eliminated in any kind of normal

classroom setting, as has the prayer at football

games. 

I will just say we hope the courts will reconsider

some of their interpretations of the establishment

37Senator Tim Hutchinson, the sponsor of the bill, explained its purpose:

“[The Founders] were not advocating freedom from religion. . . . . By

passing this legislation today the Senate will make clear that we understand the Founders’ intention.” 107 Cong. Rec. S6226. 

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clause and the free exercise clause of the first

amendment and help heal the hurt in this country.

Id. at S6226 (emphasis added). 

The Senate’s bill passed without opposition,38 and was then

sent to the House for consideration.39 In its report on the bill,

the House Judiciary Committee examined the historical

events listed in the legislative findings, and explained why

those events were relevant. It concluded that our interpretation of the First Amendment was itself unconstitutional:

Clearly, America has a rich history of referring to

God in its political and civic discourse and acknowledging the important role faith and religion have

played throughout our Nation’s history. Thus the

Ninth Circuit’s analysis in the Newdow ruling cannot

be supported by any reasonable interpretation of the

Establishment Clause as their holding is inconsistent

with the meaning given the Establishment Clause

since America’s founding. 

H.R. Rep. 107-659, at 8 (2002). 

On October 7, 2002, the Act “To reaffirm the reference to

one Nation under God in the Pledge of Allegiance” was

brought before the full House of Representatives. 107 Cong.

Rec. at H7029. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, who

chaired the Judiciary Committee and submitted the House

38The vote was 99-0. Senator Jesse Helms was absent, but Senator Don

Nickles announced on his behalf “that if present and voting [he] would

vote ‘yea.’ ” 107 Cong. Rec. S6226. 

39In the meantime, the House had passed its own resolution condemning

Newdow I. See H.R. Res. 459, 107th Cong. (2002) (“[I]t is the sense of

the House of Representatives that . . . [t]he Ninth Circuit’s ruling is inconsistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence . . .

[and t]he phrase ‘One Nation, under God,’ should remain in the Pledge of

Allegiance . . . .”). 

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Report, explained the purpose of the legislation. He, too,

expressed his approval of the action of the 1954 Congress in

inserting “under God” into the Pledge and said that he thought

it necessary for the later Congress to endorse and approve

what the earlier Congress had done:

The Newdow ruling is troubling because its analysis

. . . . is inconsistent with any reasonable interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Thus, it has become necessary for Congress to

reaffirm its understanding that the text of both the

Pledge and our national motto are legally and historically consistent with a reasonable interpretation of

the first amendment.

Id. Only two other congressmen offered remarks on the bill.

The first, Representative Robert C. Scott, stated that he

“agree[d] with the dissent” in Newdow I, although he feared

that the proposed legislation would further jeopardize the

legal status of the amended Pledge “because if the courts look

at the importance that we apparently affix to ‘one Nation

under God’ . . . then it diminishes the argument that the

phrase has de minimis meaning.” Id. at 7030. Representative

Ronnie Shows then took to the floor to express his view that

“[t]he values we teach at home and church are universal and

should not be left outside the schoolhouse door . . . . I am

happy that we are today considering a measure that reiterates

the importance of our National Motto, and the presence of

God in our lives.” Id. (emphasis added). The House voted on

the legislation the following day, and it passed by an overwhelming margin.40 Id. at H7186. On November 13, 2002,

President George W. Bush signed the bill into law.41

40The vote was 401 to 5, with 4 representatives answering “present” and

21 not voting. 107 Cong. Rec. H7186. 

41Although President Bush signed the bill into law without comment, he

had expressed his views on Newdow I the day after the case was decided:

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As this series of events illustrates, “Congress chose to

explain in great detail its purpose in reaffirming the language

of the Pledge.” Maj. op. at 3896. That 2002 Act’s legislative

history makes clear that Congress’s view of the reference to

“under God” in the Pledge had little to do with “political philosophy,” as the majority disingenuously claims, id. at 3902,

and much to do with the concept of religion, including promoting the concept of God in the public schools. As the

House Report, which even the majority accepts as competent

evidence of purpose, see id. at 3912, explicitly states, the

Pledge “is a recognition of the fact that many Americans

believe in God.” H.R. Rep. 107-659, at 5. The purpose of the

2002 Act could not be clearer: Congress sought to condemn

our decision in Newdow I, to defend the constitutionality of

the original 1954 amendment that added “under God” to the

Pledge, and to reaffirm “the presence of God in our lives,”

and in our Pledge.

In the end, the decision that the 2002 Congress went to

such great lengths to condemn never took effect — though

not, of course, because of Congress’s legislative action. After

our circuit declined to rehear the case en banc, without a single judge so much as suggesting that the 2002 Act had any

relevance to the constitutional analysis, the Supreme Court

granted certiorari and reversed on prudential standing grounds

— a lack of standing of a non-custodial parent to assert the

rights of his minor daughter — without addressing the merits

of the Establishment Clause question. See Elk Grove Unified

America is a nation that values our relationship with an almighty.

. . . . I think that the Almighty is, obviously, [an] important part

of my life, but [an] important part of the life of our country. And

that’s why the ruling of the courts was out of step with the traditions and history of America. 

Press conference, June 27, 2002, transcript available at http://

transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0206/27/bn01.html. 

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Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (2004). As a result, the

state-directed, teacher-led recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge has ever since 1954 continued, uninterrupted, in public schools throughout the nation — just as the

1954 Congress intended. 

E. Jan Roe and Her Child’s Constitutional Claim

Today, over six million students attend public school in the

State of California.42 At least 190,000 of those students are

Buddhist, Hindu or followers of a Native American religion

and thus do not believe in traditional monotheism — that is,

the existence of a single, non-metaphorical, supervisory God.43

Over half a million California students come from “secular”

families44 — a population that has “nearly doubled” across the

country over the past two decades.45 Most of these individuals

“moved away from religious observance because they no longer believe in God or religious teachings.”

46 Indeed, Califor42The precise enrollment figure is 6,275,469. See California Dept. of

Ed., State of California Education Profile, Fiscal Year 2007-08 available

at http://tinyurl.com/CalEdProfile07-08. 

43See The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey 99 (2008) [hereinafter Pew Survey], available at http://

tinyurl.com/Pew08ReligionSurvey; see also The Pew Forum on Religion

& Public Life, U.S. Religion Map and Religious Populations, available at

http://religions.pewforum.org/maps [hereinafter Pew Forum Map]. Adherents to the Buddhist and Hindu faiths together comprise three percent of

the California population. The percentage of Californians who subscribe

to these faiths is over three times the national average. See Pew Survey at

5; see also U.S. Census Bureau, The 2007 Statistical Abstract, t. 73, available at http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/07statab/pop.pdf. 

44Twenty-one percent of Californians are “unaffiliated” with any religion. Pew Survey at 100. Nationally, forty percent of people who describe

themselves as “unaffiliated” further describe themselves as “secular unaffiliated.” Id. at 5. 

45Laurie Goodstein, More Atheists Are Shouting It From the Rooftops,

N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 27, 2009, at A1. 

46Duke Helfand, Why Many Americans Change Faiths, L.A. TIMES, Apr.

28, 2009, at A12. 

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nia and the West Coast have “the largest proportion of atheists

and agnostics” of any region in the country.47 In California’s

public schools, over one million students are not sure whether

they believe in God, and fully 439,000 students are avowed

atheists.48

One atheist student who attends a California public school

is the daughter of Jan Roe. Ms. Roe’s child was born at the

turn of the millennium, and so in September of 2004 the time

came for Ms. Roe, a resident of the Rio Linda Union School

District, to put her five-year-old daughter on a school bus and

send her off for her first day of kindergarten. In so doing, Jan

Roe joined the millions of parents in California and across the

United States who every September “entrust public schools

with the education of their children.” Edwards v. Aguillard,

482 U.S. 578, 584 (1987). These parents hope the school

teachers will look over their young children and keep them

safe, but, just as important, they “condition their trust on the

understanding that the classroom will not purposely be used

to advance religious views that may conflict with the private

beliefs of the student and his or her family.” Id.

When the five-year-old Roe child arrived for her first day

of kindergarten, her teacher, a state employee, asked the

young students to stand, to place their hands on their hearts,

and to pledge their allegiance to “one nation, under God.”

Neither young Roe nor her mother, however, believe in God.

Thus, having already learned that she should not tell a lie,

young Roe simply stood silently, as her classmates recited in

unison the version of the Pledge that requires its proponents

to express their belief in God. Everyday thereafter, the children filed into school, and each morning they recited an oath

of allegiance to “one nation, under God” — an oath that unde47Pew Survey at 8. 

48See Pew Forum Map (seven percent of Californians “do[ ] not believe

in God,” five percent are “not too certain, not at all certain,” or “unsure

how certain” they are that God exists, and four percent “don’t know”). 

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niably “requires affirmation of a belief and an attitude of

mind” to which young Roe does not subscribe: a belief that

God exists and is watching over our nation. Cf. W. Va. State

Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 633 (1943). For eight

months, the five-year-old Roe faced, every morning, the daily

“dilemma of participating” in the amended Pledge, with all

that implies about her religious beliefs, or of being cast as a

protester for her silent refusal. Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577,

593 (1992). On some days she quietly endured the gaze of her

teacher and her classmates as she refused to say the Pledge,

standing in silence as the classroom’s lone dissenter; on others she walked out of the room and stood in the hallway by

herself, physically removed from the religious “adherents” —

the “favored members of the [classroom] community,” Santa

Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 310 (2000), who

were able to swear their fealty to the United States without

simultaneously espousing a state-sponsored belief in God that

was antithetical to their personal religious views. 

In April, 2005, Jan Roe filed this lawsuit on behalf of herself and her child. Her claim is straightforward: The Constitution of the United States, a nation founded by exiles who

crossed an ocean in search of freedom from state-imposed

religious beliefs, prohibits the purposefully designed, teacherled, state-sponsored daily indoctrination of her child with a

religious belief that both she and her daughter reject.

III. The 1954 Amendment and This Appeal

The history that I have just described permits only one conclusion regarding the constitutionality of the state-directed,

teacher-led, daily recitation in public schools of the “under

God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance as amended by Congress in 1954. In order to avoid reaching that conclusion, the

majority repeatedly and deliberately misstates the issue that is

before us. 

First and foremost, the “hotly contested issue in this case”

is not, as the majority asserts, “whether Congress’ purpose in

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enacting the Pledge of Allegiance was predominantly patriotic

or religious.” Maj. op. at 3885. For many years prior to 1942,

indeed from since at least the 1930s, the Pledge of Allegiance

was a patriotic and secular exercise widely recited in public

schools and at various public events and in various public

fora. It was officially adopted as such by Congress in 1942.

It is undisputed and indeed indisputable that at that time the

Pledge was solely patriotic and secular and contained no religious component or element. In 1954 Congress amended the

Pledge by inserting into that patriotic and secular instrument

the religious phrase “under God.” The issue here is whether

the amendment to the Pledge — the insertion of the phrase

“under God” — was enacted for a predominantly religious

purpose, not whether the Pledge as a whole was enacted for

such a purpose. 

Second, the issue is not “whether [plaintiff] Roechild can

prevent other students . . . from saying the Pledge.” Maj. op.

at 3889; see also id. at 3888. Contrary to the majority’s assertion, this case presents no issue about whether young Roe can

prohibit other five-year-olds from doing anything at all.

Rather, the issue is whether the Constitution prohibits young

Roe’s state-employed teachers from conducting the statedirected, daily recitation of the “under God” version of the

Pledge in public schools. To be sure, as a member of the

majority once wrote, prohibiting such recitations “deprives

Christians [and other adherents to monotheistic religions] of

the satisfaction of seeing the government adopt their religious

message as [its] own, but this kind of government affiliation

with particular religious messages is precisely what the Establishment Clause precludes.” Cammack v. Waihee, 932 F.2d

765, 785 (9th Cir. 1991) (D. Nelson, J., dissenting) (second

alteration original) (quoting County of Allegheny v. ACLU,

492 U.S. 573, 601 n.51 (1989)). Accordingly, the responsibility for any dissatisfaction felt by “other students” cannot be

placed, as the majority shamefully seeks to do, upon the

shoulders of a kindergartener; it results from the requirements

of the Constitution itself. 

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Third, the majority’s assertion that young Roe asks us “to

prevent teachers from leading other students [in] reciting the

Pledge of Allegiance,” maj. op. at 3874, like its related claim

that I “would have us strike down the Pledge,” id. at 3919, is

completely and utterly false. The issue presented by this case

involves only the recitation of the words “under God” as a

part of the Pledge of Allegiance — the words that Congress

added to the Pledge in 1954 — and not the Pledge in its original, pre-amendment secular form. Had one more member of

today’s panel ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, our decision

would have held only that the 1954 amendment to the Pledge

was unconstitutional as applied in the context of public

schools implementing a state-directed program of daily

teacher-led recitations. Public schools could have complied

with that ruling simply by having teachers lead students in

daily recitations of the Pledge in its pre-1954 form, without

the added religious phrase “under God.” And our decision

would not have held unconstitutional the recitation of any version of the Pledge — with or without the challenged phrase

— outside of the public school context. 

Finally, as must be obvious even to the majority, the issue

in this case is not the purpose of the 2002 Pledge recodification, which merely reaffirmed the 1954 amendment and Congress’s purpose in enacting it. The recodification also

declared that our court’s First Amendment analysis was erroneous and that Newdow I was wrongly decided. See supra

Part II.D. The 2002 recodification is of no constitutional consequence, and no one but the two members of the majority has

even purported to believe otherwise. Bafflingly, the majority

declares that because the 2002 Congress adopted a provision

that “reaffirmed the exact language that has appeared in the

Pledge for decades,” maj. op. at 3895, “[i]t is the 2002 statute

. . . that sets forth our current Pledge,” id. at 3894, and “[i]t

is the 2002 Congress’ purpose we are called upon to examine.” Id. at 3928. The majority’s reliance on the 2002 legislation to obviate the purpose of Congress in 1954 is no more

than a transparent tactic intended to divert attention from an

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obvious constitutional violation towards a substance-less

event of no legal consequence. 

The deliberate misstatement of the issue presented by a

case is not an unusual tactic for a majority that seeks to mislead the reader, as well as other members of the judiciary, in

order to prejudice the outcome of a constitutional question.

Only twenty-four years ago, in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S.

186, 190 (1986), the majority misstated the issue before the

Court as “whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.” The

dissent correctly responded that the true issue was whether the

Constitution protected “the fundamental interest all individuals have in controlling the nature of their intimate associations

with others.” Id. at 206 (Blackmun, J., dissenting). It took the

Court seventeen years to overcome the majority’s unconstitutional conclusion, which followed inevitably from its fallacious framing of the issue. The Court held in Lawrence v.

Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 578 (2003), in unusually blunt terms,

that “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is

not correct today.” The framing of the issue here is even more

blatantly erroneous and misleading than was its framing in

Bowers, and the majority here must be as aware of that fact

as, one may fairly surmise, was the majority in Bowers.

A. Recent Contrivance of the Majority’s Novel Theory

Before the majority at some unknown point following the

argument in this case conjured up its idea that “[i]t is the 2002

Congress’ purpose we are called upon to examine,” maj. op.

at 3928, no one, lawyer or judge, had thought to offer such a

bizarre argument or to attach any constitutional significance

to the action of the 2002 Congress. The history of Newdow III

makes this clear, as does all of the ensuing Pledge litigation,

including the case before us. Three months after the reaffirmation of the Pledge statute, this court issued an amended

opinion superseding Newdow I and an order denying rehearing en banc, with two separate dissents and a concurrence in

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the denial of rehearing en banc. See Newdow v. U.S. Cong.,

328 F.3d 482 (9th Cir. 2003) (“Newdow III”), amending 292

F.3d 597 (9th Cir. 2002) (“Newdow I”), rev’d on other

grounds sub nom. Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow,

542 U.S. 1 (2004). In striking contrast to today’s majority,

none of the twelve judges who participated in any of those

opinions or orders thought the 2002 reaffirmation important

enough even to mention.

49 When the case was decided by the

Supreme Court shortly afterwards, the opinion of the Court

did not include any reference to the 2002 legislation; in fact,

it stated that “the Pledge as we know it today” was the result

of the 1954 amendment. Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at 7. Three justices wrote concurrences that addressed the constitutional

issue, but the 2002 legislation was mentioned in only one

fleeting reference that simply noted its enactment. See id. at

26 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring). 

Nor prior to the issuance of today’s opinion did any party,

intervenor, amicus, or judge in the case presently before us,

49The majority’s attempts to explain away the conspicuous absence of

any mention of the 2002 legislation in Newdow III would be ludicrous and

unworthy of response if the constitutional rights of religious minorities

were not at stake. The majority grudgingly concedes that “the 2002 Act

was technically passed before issuance of Newdow III” in 2003. Maj. op.

at 3929 n.37 (emphasis added). Of course, saying that 2002 is “technically” before 2003 is like saying that a dog is “technically” not a cat — or,

more pertinent here, that God is “technically” not a secular term. Undeterred, however, the majority goes on to explain that Newdow III “addressed the newly raised questions of whether Newdow had standing and

authority to represent his child, and did not revisit the fundamental Establishment Clause analysis of Newdow I.” Id. This is simply incorrect. Our

court addressed “newly raised questions” about Newdow’s standing in

Newdow II, a published order issued on December 4, 2002. See 313 F.3d

at 502. When we issued Newdow III two months later, not only did the

amended majority opinion make substantive changes to the reasoning and

holding of Newdow I, but six judges joined a dissent in the denial of

rehearing en banc that conducted a new and independent constitutional

analysis. In short, our court in 2003 did “revisit the fundamental Establishment Clause analysis of Newdow I,” but everyone involved understood

that the 2002 reaffirmation was wholly irrelevant to that analysis. 

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including the two in the majority, deem the 2002 reaffirmation to be of any legal significance or indeed even worthy of

mentioning at any time during the litigation of this appeal.

During the hour-long oral argument before this court, no

judge, specifically including the two members of today’s

majority, asked a single question or made a single reference

of any kind to the 2002 reenactment. In fact, no one, including

any of the counsel arguing the case, noted, referred to, or

commented on it during that argument. To put it simply, no

one, including the two judges in the majority, thought at the

time of argument that the 2002 reaffirmation was in any way

relevant. Furthermore, in the more than 500 pages of briefing

filed by the parties, the intervenors, and the twelve amici,

there were only two places at which the 2002 legislation was

even noted, and at those places it was noted and nothing

more. The brief of the United States includes one sentence in

its history section recording the passage of the 2002 recodification and one citation to that legislative act in connection

with the recodification of the motto, “In God We Trust.” In

that brief, like in all others filed in this litigation, the filing

party, here the United States, attached no legal significance to

the 2002 reaffirmation of the 1954 amendment. In sum, the

parties, intervenors, and amici entirely ignored the 2002 reaffirmation in their discussions over whether the inclusion of

“under God” in the Pledge rendered its daily recitation in public schools unconstitutional as applied; they all simply

deemed the reaffirmation irrelevant. Accordingly, contrary to

the suddenly developed nostra sponte view of two judges of

this court, nowhere in the briefs or the oral argument was

there any suggestion by the United States or anyone else that

“[i]t is the 2002 statute . . . that sets forth our current Pledge,”

id. at 30, that “[i]t is the 2002 Congress’ purpose we are called upon to examine,” id. at 68, or indeed that the 2002 legislation had any relevance whatsoever to the question of the

constitutionality of the recitation of the phrase “under God”

as part of the Pledge. No one involved in this case suggested,

even remotely, that the 2002 enactment shed any light on the

purpose of Congress in amending the Pledge in 1954, or that

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a new or different purpose now underlies the inclusion of the

words “under God” in the Pledge. Nor, of course, did anyone

suggest that because Congress disagreed with us as to the

meaning of the First Amendment, we should yield to Congress’s view. 

Other courts have also heard Establishment Clause challenges involving the Pledge of Allegiance in the years since

the 2002 reenactment, but like our court, not one of them, not

even a single judge, until today even mentioned the 2002 legislation when deciding such a claim. See, e.g., Myers v. Loudon County Pub. Schs., 418 F.3d 395, 398 (4th Cir. 2005)

(noting that “[t]he Pledge was amended in 1954” but making

no reference to the 2002 statute); Freedom from Religion

Found. v. Hanover Sch. Dist., ___ F. Supp. 2d ___, 2009 WL

3227860 (D.N.H. Sept. 30, 2009) (discussing the intent of the

1954 Congress but making no reference to the 2002 statute);

Keplinger v. United States, 2006 WL 1455747 (M.D. Pa. May

23, 2006) (Unpub.) (addressing the 1954 legislative history

but making no reference to anything that occurred in 2002);

see also Croft v. Perry, 604 F. Supp. 2d 932 (N.D. Tex. 2009)

(in an Establishment Clause challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance to the Texas state flag, discussing the legislative history of the 1954 federal Pledge amendment but making no

reference to the 2002 legislation).

Under these circumstances, one cannot help but wonder

how, when, and why the majority decided to afford the 2002

reaffirmation the importance it attributes to it in today’s opinion. Rarely, if ever, does a court decide a case, let alone an

important constitutional issue, on a ground that no party mentioned, no party briefed, no party argued, the existence of

which no intervenor or amicus including the United States

deemed to be of any relevance, and as to which the court itself

at no time made any inquiry or reference prior to issuing its

decision. Certainly no court has ever done so on so spurious

a ground as the 2002 reaffirmation, a ground supported by no

colorable legal argument and contrary to so many decades of

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constitutional and other federal law. The best guess as to the

reason for the majority’s sudden, last-minute reliance on the

2002 reaffirmation is its belated recognition that its principal

arguments with respect to the 1954 amendment, on which it

had hoped to rely in order to reach its desired result, are all

without merit and are easily refuted under controlling

Supreme Court law. Nevertheless, I am compelled to address

its Hail Mary argument.50

B. Immateriality of the 2002 Legislation

The reasons that the majority may ultimately have been

driven to rely on the 2002 enactment as a justification for the

1954 amendment’s addition of the phrase “under God” will

become obvious in Sections IV and V, infra, where it is

explained why the Constitution and the applicable Supreme

Court precedent dictate the conclusion that all three Establishment Clause tests preclude the state-directed, teacher-led,

daily recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge in

public schools. The reasons that no one but the two members

of the majority has ever attempted to justify the 1954 insertion

of the words “under God” into the Pledge on the basis of the

2002 “reaffirmation” are evident as well. 

The majority argues that “it makes sense that we must

examine the purpose of the most recent Congressional enactment” because “[o]therwise, a perfectly valid measure . . .

would forever be banned by the politically motivated statements of some legislators.” Maj. op. at 3913-14. This argument ignores the actual content and legislative history of both

the 1954 enactment of the “under God” amendment and the

2002 reaffirmation of that congressional action. Whether a

50In football, a Hail Mary is a last-minute desperation pass, the most

famous being Doug Flutie’s, then a quarterback for Boston College, in a

game against Miami in 1984. Sports analogies describing judging appear

to be all the rage these days. Some have merit. Others, especially some

involving baseball, clearly do not. 

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subsequent Congress could have rehabilitated the “under

God” amendment by repudiating the actions of the 1954 lawmakers and then reenacting the amended Pledge for entirely

different reasons is not a question presented here: the 2002

Congress did exactly the opposite. The legislation it passed

did not purport to do anything more than express disagreement with Newdow I, assert that we misunderstood the meaning of the Establishment Clause, and reaffirm the earlier 1954

congressional action. Neither of the first two pronouncements

constituted a lawful exercise of Congress’s legislative powers

and thus were without legal significance, and the third did not

change in any way the facts or law regarding the constitutional question raised by Congress’s adoption of the “under

God” amendment in 1954, and thus had no effect upon the

outcome of this case.

The 2002 Congress simply declared its approval of the

1954 amendment to the Pledge when, in response to Newdow

I, it purported to reaffirm the earlier Congress’s action, necessarily including the purpose that underlay it. Members of

Congress stated their disapproval of Newdow I, in statements

on the House and Senate floors and in the text of the reaffirmation itself, insisting that the 1954 law had been constitutionally adopted and applied. See supra Part II.D. Congress

did not seek to nullify or change the earlier Congress’s original purpose in 1954; at no time did it expressly state that the

purpose in 1954 was other than religious, and at no time did

it expressly offer any purpose other than religion for its act of

affirmation. Certainly, at no point did it suggest that the

phrase “under God” was not religious. Rather, what it essentially did was to react, as Congresses have done in the past,

to a judicial decision that it did not like by passing legislation

or resolutions that attempted to overrule the scope of constitutional protections that the courts had afforded. See City of

Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). It did so here by simply setting forth a set of “findings” reporting pre-1954 historical events and a series of judicial decisions, all but one post3984 NEWDOW v. RIO LINDA USD

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1954, in order to explain why our court’s interpretation of the

Constitution in Newdow I was in error. 

In its findings, Congress noted a number of times prior to

1954 that the religious term “God” had been used, such as Jefferson’s authoring of “Notes on the State of Virginia” and

Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, as well as the resolution calling for the proclamation of Thanksgiving Day. Pub. L. No.

107-293, 116 Stat. 2057, 2057-58 (2002). It then noted judicial decisions it apparently deemed inconsistent with Newdow

I, id. at 2058-60, and it ended with its finding that Newdow

I was “erroneous,” id. at 2060. Somewhere in the recitation of

historical facts, the majority purports to discover an “absolutely clear” expression of Congress’s secular purposes, maj.

op. 3902, and an equally clear statement “that we had misunderstood Congress’ purpose in our ruling in Newdow III.”

51 Id.

at 3913. The majority does not identify those “absolutely

clear” statements, and for good reason: they do not exist.

Had Congress set forth its “secular reasons . . . directly in

the statute,” as the majority claims, maj. op. at 3895, one

would expect that my colleagues could and would simply

quote those reasons directly from the statute. Had Congress

made an “absolutely clear” statement of its secular purposes,

id. at 3902, one would expect that the majority could and

would provide an equally clear explanation of what those purposes were. The majority does neither, as Congress never

identified any secular purpose underlying its 1954 adoption of

the “under God” amendment or its 2002 reaffirmation of that

amendment. Instead, the majority variously states that the

2002 Congress’s purpose in reaffirming the inclusion of the

phrase “under God” in the Pledge was “to underscore the

political philosophy of the Founding Fathers,” maj. op. at

3876, “to add [a] note of importance . . . [to the] Pledge,” id.,

51Because the 2002 legislation was enacted prior to our 2003 decision

in Newdow III, I assume that the majority intended to refer to Newdow I

rather than Newdow III when making this assertion. 

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“to inspire patriotism,” id. at 3877, to “recogni[ze] . . . historical principles of governance,” id. at 3889, “to describe an

attribute of the Republic,” id. at 3891-94, to “reference . . . the

historical and religious traditions of our country,” id. at 3893,

and to “inspir[e] and solemniz[e],” id. at 3914. At no point,

however, did Congress say in 2002 that it had any purpose in

reaffirming the 1954 amendment to the Pledge other than to

reaffirm the 1954 Congress’s effort to promote religion, especially in the case of public schoolchildren. To the extent that

the majority has inferred any specific reasons from the 2002

Act’s descriptions of various historical events, that methodology would provide equal support for the conclusion that Congress’s purpose was to promote “the Glory of God and the

advancement of the Christian Faith”; to hold “that God is

just”; to “declare[ ] . . . [r]eligion . . . necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind”; and to “acknowledg[e] . . . the many signal favors of Almighty God.”

52

The majority cannot support or even clearly express its

claim of a secular congressional purpose because at no point

was there any statement, in the 2002 Act or in its findings,

that there was any purpose other than religion that motivated

52See Pub. L. No. 107-293, 116 Stat. 2057, 2057-58 (2002) (“Congress

finds the following: (1) On November 11, 1620 . . . the Pilgrims signed

the Mayflower Compact that declared: ‘Having undertaken, for the Glory

of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith and honor of our King

and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia,’ . . . . (3) In 1781, Thomas Jefferson . . . in his work titled ‘Notes

on the State of Virginia’ wrote: ‘. . . . I tremble for my country when I

reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.’ . . . . (5) On

July 21, 1789 . . . the First Congress of the United States also passed the

Northwest Ordinance . . . which declared: ‘Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,

schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.’ . . . . (6)

On September 25, 1789, the First Congress unanimously approved a resolution calling on President George Washington to proclaim a National Day

of Thanksgiving . . . by declaring, ‘a day of public thanksgiving and

prayer, to be observed by acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the many

signal favors of Almighty God . . . .’ ” (emphases added)). 

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the 1954 enactment of the “under God” amendment or the

2002 reaffirmation of that earlier congressional action. The

2002 Congress certainly disagreed with Newdow I, but its disagreement was based on our interpretation of the Establishment Clause. See supra Part II.D. Congress did not object to

our decision on the basis that we had misunderstood its purpose; rather, it objected to our conclusion that the purpose we

found was constitutionally impermissible. 

The Supreme Court has clearly and consistently stated that

legislation seeking to change a court’s constitutional decision

exceeds congressional authority; if it did not, “no longer

would the Constitution be ‘superior paramount law,

unchangeable by ordinary means.’ ” Boerne, 521 U.S. at 529

(quoting Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177, 2

L.Ed. 60 (1803)). Notwithstanding any legislation Congress

might choose to enact, “[t]he power to interpret the Constitution in a case or controversy remains in the Judiciary.” Id. at

524. Accordingly, we are bound to evaluate the “under God”

version of the Pledge enacted in 1954, without regard to any

view that Congress may have expressed as to its constitutionality in the 2002 reaffirmation or any view it may have

expressed regarding any constitutional interpretation that we

rendered in Newdow I:

When [a court] has interpreted the Constitution, it

has acted within the province of the Judicial Branch,

which embraces the duty to say what the law is. . . .

When the political branches of the Government act

against the background of a judicial interpretation of

the Constitution already issued, it must be understood that in later cases and controversies the Court

will treat its precedents with the respect due them

under settled principles, including stare decisis, and

contrary expectations must be disappointed.

Id. at 536 (citing Marbury, 5 U.S. at 177). 

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Under these circumstances, it is difficult to comprehend

how any reasonable judge could in good faith suggest that the

2002 recodification, even with its introductory recitation of

historical events, provides any basis for disregarding the overwhelmingly predominant religious purpose of the 1954

amendment or substituting in its place some vague and inchoate secular purpose, especially knowing that no lawyer in this

case and no judge in any similar case has ever offered so

unsupportable a theory. Even were we to consider what the

majority appears at times to contend is the additional purpose,

“add[ing a] note of importance” to the Pledge, maj. op. at

3876, or any other similar purpose to which it seems at other

times to allude, such as proclaiming that ours is a “limited

government,” any such additional purpose would be of minimal significance in light of the overwhelmingly predominant

religious purpose evident from the entire legislative record let

alone the plain meaning of the words “under God.” The

majority’s approach is directly contrary to McCreary County

v. ACLU of Kentucky, 545 U.S. 844, 871-72 (2005), in which

the Supreme Court held that even the repeal of a prior enactment does not “erase[ it] from the record of evidence bearing

on current purpose,” and that a government action taken without “repeal[ing] or otherwise repudiat[ing]” the previous

action carries even less weight.53 The majority defies this

binding precedent and seizes upon the 2002 recodification in

order to make an “implausible claim that governmental purpose has changed.” McCreary, 545 U.S. at 874. That argument “should not carry the day in a court of law any more

than in a head with common sense.” Id.

53The majority’s attempts to distinguish McCreary, see maj. op. at 3896

n.19, are not only thoroughly unpersuasive, but completely irrelevant.

Regardless of how many factual distinctions the majority could identify,

this case would still be governed by the legal principles set forth in

McCreary: whatever subsequent actions a governmental body takes, it

cannot erase the past, and a failure to repeal or repudiate an earlier measure renders any such argument of little or no force whatsoever. 

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The majority’s decision not only fails to disappoint the illegitimate expectations of the 2002 Congress, it surely exceeds

those lawmakers’ highest hopes. It acquiesces completely in

the congressional disagreement with the judicial interpretation

we previously rendered, accepting the interpretation of constitutional law set forth in the legislative findings to the 2002

reaffirmation. Maj. op. at 3896-3902. It would appear, then,

that the majority is no more willing to follow the rule of separation of powers than it is to adhere to the fundamental tenets

of the Establishment Clause.

C. The Issue: The Constitutionality of the 1954 Amendment

As Applied

“It cannot be the case that Congress may override a constitutional decision by simply rewriting the history upon which

it is based.” United States v. Enas, 255 F.3d 662, 675 (9th Cir.

2001) (en banc). Nor can a court reach a constitutional conclusion by rewriting the history of the government’s actions,

or by selectively declaring some of those actions obsolete, as

today’s majority does. Rather, it is the judiciary’s responsibility to undertake an independent examination of both the historical facts and the law, and, ultimately, “to say what the law

is.” Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 177, 2 L.Ed.

60 (1803). 

Because the 2002 legislation made no effort to modify the

wording of the amended Pledge, did not seek to change or disavow the purpose for which the words “under God” were

inserted into the previously non-sectarian Pledge, and could

not erase the legislative history underlying the 1954 amendment even if Congress so wished, the 2002 reaffirmation

could, even under the majority’s interpretation, constitute

nothing more than an ineffective effort by Congress to overrule a judicial interpretation of the Constitution. The majority

therefore does a disservice to the Constitution and the judiciary by purporting to rely on that Act to justify its position

regarding the “under God” amendment. We must look to the

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Pledge as it was amended in 1954 and to the purpose for

which that amendment was made. That has, correctly, been

the view of our court and all other courts hearing Establishment Clause challenges involving the Pledge; it is the view of

the parties to this action, of the intervenors, and of the amici;

and it appeared to be the view of the two members of the

majority until sometime after oral argument, when my colleagues must have thought that they had discovered, albeit

belatedly, an argument that no one else had previously

deemed worthy of consideration or had even mentioned — an

argument that they hoped might somehow support the result

that they desired to reach but could not otherwise attain. My

colleagues would have far better performed their duty had

they taken their chances and left it to the Supreme Court to

revise the law governing the question now before us. For it is

only if the Supreme Court were to decide to change its view

of the Establishment Clause and overrule the precedent that

now binds us, that the state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the Pledge with the words “under God” included could

be held to be in compliance with the Constitution.

IV. Establishment Clause Tests

I now turn to the real issue in this case: Does the Establishment Clause, as it has been construed by the Supreme Court,

preclude the state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the

version of the Pledge, as amended by Congress in 1954, in

public schools? The answer is crystal clear. Today’s majority

not only ignores the historical record and the plain meaning

of the words contained in the amendment to the Pledge; it also

distorts — when it does not ignore — the applicable Supreme

Court doctrine governing the constitutional issues before us.

Although the Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence is

often derided as inconsistent,54 the challenges in applying the

54See, e.g., Rosenberger v. Rector & Visitors of Univ. of Va., 515 U.S.

819, 861 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring) (“[O]ur Establishment Clause

jurisprudence is in hopeless disarray . . . .”); Lynch v. Donelly, 465 U.S.

668, 699 n.4 (1984) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (“It seems the Court is willing to alter its analysis from Term to Term in order to suit its preferred

results.”). 

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governing precedents ought not be treated as a license to disregard or rewrite the law that binds us, especially where those

precedents unambiguously require a holding contrary to that

which a majority of a panel of this court may desire to reach.

The Supreme Court’s decisions do not merely provide “constitutional ‘signpost[s],’ to be followed or ignored in a particular case as our predilections may dictate.” Wallace v. Jaffree,

472 U.S. 38, 69 (1985) (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment) (internal citation omitted). Rather, as members of an

intermediate appellate court, our duty when existing doctrine

clearly governs a case is to apply the law as it is written;

“only [the Supreme] Court may overrule one of its precedents.” Thurston Motor Lines, Inc. v. Jordan K. Rand, Ltd.,

460 U.S. 533, 535 (1983) (per curiam).55

55Nor is the considered judgment of this court something that should be

lightly cast aside, especially when we have already decided the merits of

the exact issue before us, as is the case here. See Newdow v. U.S. Cong.,

328 F.3d 482 (9th Cir. 2003) (“Newdow III”), amending 292 F.3d 597 (9th

Cir. 2002) (“Newdow I”), rev’d on other grounds sub nom. Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1 (2004). No intervening decision by

the Supreme Court or this court has changed the governing law or legal

principles in any respect since we addressed a case seven years ago with

the same facts and even many of the same parties as the one we address

today. The majority’s contrary argument — that legislation enacted before

our decision in Newdow III constitutes a subsequent change in the law —

is nothing short of nonsensical. Maj. op. at 3928-29 & n.37; see also supra

n.49. 

I agree that our prior decision is no longer binding, but it nonetheless

“remains viable as persuasive authority, notwithstanding the Supreme

Court’s vacatur.” Roe v. Anderson, 134 F.3d 1400, 1404 (9th Cir. 1998).

It is thus entitled to at least some deference — certainly greater deference

than it has received from the majority. In truth, the only reason this case

is being decided differently today than it was seven years ago is that a random lottery drew the members of this panel to decide the issue. 

To those who question whether the results in constitutional and

other cases depend on the membership of the panel, or whether

the replacement of even a single Supreme Court justice can

change the fundamental nature of the rights of all Americans with

respect to matters as basic as . . . the nature of religious liberty,

the result in the case currently before our panel . . . illustrat[es

just] how the judicial system currently operates. 

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In the context of the Establishment Clause, circuit courts

and scholars have recognized three separate “tests” that control our analysis: the Lemon test, the endorsement test, and the

coercion test. See, e.g., Borden v. Sch. Dist. of E. Brunswick,

523 F.3d 153, 175 (3d Cir. 2008); Mellen v. Bunting, 327 F.3d

355, 370-71 (4th Cir. 2003); DeStefano v. Emergency Hous.

Group, Inc., 247 F.3d 397, 410-16 (2d Cir 2001); Doe v.

Beaumont Indep. Sch. Dist., 240 F.3d 462, 468 (5th Cir.

2001). There is no need to evaluate the relative merits of the

various tests. As the majority acknowledges, the law is clear

that each is binding and that the failure to satisfy any one is

fatal. See, e.g., Doe v. Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist., 168 F.3d

806, 818 (5th Cir. 1999), aff’d 530 U.S. 290 (2000) (applying

the tests independently); accord Newdow III, 328 F.3d at 487

(“We are free to apply any or all of the three tests, and to

invalidate any measure that fails any one of them.”), rev’d on

other grounds sub nom. Elk Grove, 542 U.S. 1 (2004). Here,

the choice of test matters little, as the state-directed, teacherled recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge clearly

fails to meet the constitutional standards under each of the

tests, and thus is thrice unconstitutional.

A. The Lemon Test and the “Under God” Amendment

Despite repeated criticisms from various flanks, “[t]he

Lemon test remains the benchmark to gauge whether a particular government activity violates the Establishment Clause.”

Access Fund v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 499 F.3d 1036, 1042 (9th

Carver v. Lehman, 558 F.3d 869, 880 (9th Cir. 2009) (Reinhardt, J., concurring in the judgment), amending 528 F.3d 659 (9th Cir. 2008) (Reinhardt, J. joined by Ferguson, J.).

In this case, a simple change in two of the judges, or to put it more

accurately, a change in only one — as the views of Judge Fernandez, the

original dissenter, are clearly shared by Judge Bea — results in a regrettable abandonment of constitutional principles and an unfortunate infringement on our public schoolchildren’s rights to religious freedom. 

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Cir. 2007). The Supreme Court applied the Lemon test in its

most recent Establishment Clause case, see McCreary County

v. ACLU of Ky., 545 U.S. 844, 859-67 (2005), as well as its

most recent Establishment Clause case involving public

schools, see Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 314. It has “particularly

relied on Lemon in . . . case[s] involving the sensitive relationship between government and religion in the education of our

children.” Sch. Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, 473 U.S. 373,

383 (1985). Indeed, with the exception of Lee v. Weisman,

505 U.S. 577 (1992), see infra Part IV.C, “[i]n no case involving religious activities in public schools has the Court failed

to apply vigorously the Lemon factors.” Lee, 505 U.S. at 603

n.4 (Blackmun, J., concurring).56

The test itself is well-established: “First, the statute [or

practice] must have a secular legislative purpose; second, its

principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances

nor inhibits religion; finally, the statute [or practice] must not

foster ‘an excessive entanglement with religion.’ ” Lemon v.

Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612-13 (1971) (internal citation

omitted) (emphases added) (quoting Walz v. Tax Comm’n,

397 U.S. 664, 674 (1970)). The secular purpose must predominate; it cannot be “merely secondary to a religious objective.”

McCreary, 545 U.S. at 864. Failure to satisfy any one of the

three prongs of the Lemon test is sufficient to invalidate the

challenged law or practice. Particularly relevant to this case,

a finding that a challenged statute or practice had a predominantly religious purpose “make[s] it unnecessary, and indeed

inappropriate, to evaluate [its] practical significance.” Wallace, 472 U.S. at 61. Thus, “[i]f the law was enacted for the

purpose of endorsing religion ‘no consideration of the second

or third criteria [of Lemon] is necessary.’ ” Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 585 (1987) (second alteration in original)

56In Lee, the Court concluded that the challenged practice violated the

coercion test. Having done so, there was no need for it to apply the Lemon

test as well. Still, Lee stands alone in the Court’s failure to employ Lemon

rather than or in addition to one of the other two tests. 

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(quoting Wallace, 472 U.S. at 56)). Simply put, if the purpose

of the statute or practice “is the advancement or inhibition of

religion then the enactment exceeds the scope of legislative

power as circumscribed by the Constitution.” Abington, 374

U.S. at 222. 

The majority does not disagree that Lemon is the law of the

land, nor does it dispute that a statute or state-sponsored practice that has a predominantly religious purpose necessarily

violates the Establishment Clause. Rather, the fundamental

error the majority makes that permeates its entire analysis is

that it fails to comprehend that the Lemon test must be applied

to the 1954 amendment that adds “under God” to the Pledge

and not to the Pledge in its entirety. The majority’s attempt to

ignore the amendment and instead base its analysis on “the

Pledge as a whole,” maj. op. at 3876, is contrary to the legal

principles that bind us for two reasons: First and foremost, the

Supreme Court has determined how statutes amending provisions similar to the one before us shall be examined under

Lemon and we are obligated to follow its holding. Second, it

is the words “under God” contained in the amendment that

Jan Roe and her daughter challenge. They raise no question

as to the constitutionality of the state-directed recitation of the

Pledge as it existed prior to the 1954 amendment, or as it

would exist today if the two offending words were stricken;

it is only the addition of the religious phrase that they contest.

Yet, as evidenced by its deliberate decision not to discuss or

even to acknowledge the explicitly religious legislative history of the “under God” amendment to the Pledge, the majority simply refuses to examine the legislative enactment that

was zealously supported and unanimously adopted by 531

Senators and Representatives, signed by the President of the

United States, celebrated with the most bellicose and divisive

of all religious hymns on the steps of the Capitol, and

endorsed by forty-three state legislatures. Instead, my colleagues contend that our analysis should examine “the entire

wording of the Pledge as a whole,” id. at 3886 n.9 (emphasis

added), i.e., the Pledge as it exists today, disregarding the fact

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that it is only the application of the amendment that is challenged as unconstitutional. 

Although the majority’s willful blindness toward the existence and text of the amendment to the Pledge may be a necessary precondition to its reaching its desired outcome in this

case, its refusal to follow controlling Supreme Court precedent reflects remarkable disdain for the law. The Supreme

Court has explicitly held in a case that is indistinguishable

from the one before us that our inquiry must center on the

amendment and not the provision as a whole — in this case

on the specific words Congress enacted in 1954 and inserted

into the Pledge of Allegiance: “under God.” In Wallace v. Jaffree, a secular and otherwise constitutional statute providing

for a moment of silence in public schools was amended so as

to add an explicitly religious provision stating that the

moment of silence could be employed for prayer. The

Supreme Court struck down that legislative amendment as

violative of the Establishment Clause because of the “textual

differences” introduced by the amendment: “The addition of

[the words] ‘or voluntary prayer’ indicates that the State

intended to characterize prayer as a favored practice.” Wallace, 472 U.S. at 60. The majority seeks to evade its obligation to follow that binding precedent, but it is not free to set

aside, overrule, or ignore it, or to avoid the conclusion that

such binding precedent compels.

If the majority followed the Court’s opinion in Wallace, as

it is bound to do, it would be required to recognize that the

previously secular Pledge of Allegiance was amended with

the express purpose of promoting a state-sponsored belief in

God and of indoctrinating schoolchildren with that belief. The

only permissible conclusion my two colleagues could reach

after acknowledging that fact would be that the amendment

that results in the state-directed, teacher-led daily recitation of

the religious version of the Pledge of Allegiance in public

schools is, at the least, unconstitutional as applied.

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1.

There is no escaping the fact that our decision today is controlled by the Supreme Court’s directly on-point analysis in

Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38 (1985). The case is what law

students and their professors used to call a “spotted cow.”

57

The majority goes through numerous contortions in an effort

to escape the unavoidable conclusion reached by Chief Justice

Burger in dissent: Wallace “render[s] the Pledge unconstitutional.” Id. at 88 (Burger, C.J., dissenting).58 These contortions, however, cannot hide the fact that two judges of our

circuit are simply disregarding binding Supreme Court law. 

In Wallace, the state of Alabama amended a statute that

called for a moment of silence at the beginning of each school

day by adding language clarifying that the moment of silence

could be used for “voluntary prayer.” See Wallace, 472 U.S.

at 40 n.2. Unlike here, there was no practical difference in

Wallace between the original statute and the revised version

that incorporated the amendment; in fact, the Court did not

question that under the original statute students could voluntarily pray during mandatory moments of silence if they so

desired. Cf. id. at 59; id. at 72-74 (O’Connor, J., concurring

in the judgment); id. at 85 (Burger, C.J., dissenting). Still, the

Court struck down the statute containing the clarifying “voluntary prayer” amendment as an unconstitutional establishment of religion, reasoning that the “textual differences”

between the original and the revised statute conclusively

established the religious purpose of the later enactment. Id. at

58 (majority opinion). Laying the two statutes side by side,

57See, e.g., Picker Int’l, Inc. v. Parten, 935 F.2d 257, 261 (11th Cir.

1991) (“a gray horse case or spotted cow case, meaning it’s exactly like

the case that is before the Court now.”). 

58By this brief statement, the Chief Justice obviously meant only that

the Pledge was unconstitutional to the extent that it was pronounced with

the words added by the amendment, as is the case with regard to plaintiff

RoeChild and others similarly situated. 

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the Court noted that “[w]hen the differences between [the

revised statute] and its . . . predecessor [were] examined,” id.,

it was readily apparent that the amendment “had no secular

purpose,”id. at 56. As the Court explained:

[T]he only significant textual difference is the addition of the words ‘or voluntary prayer.’ . . . Appellants have not identified any secular purpose that

was not fully served by [the law] before the enactment of [the amendment]. Thus, only two conclusions are consistent with the text of the [new law]:

(1) the statute was enacted to convey a message of

state endorsement and promotion of [religion]; or (2)

the statute was enacted for no purpose. No one suggests that the statute was nothing but a meaningless

or irrational act.

Id. at 59 (emphasis added). 

In reaffirming Wallace, the Supreme Court has held that

“[t]he plain meaning of [a] statute’s words . . . can control the

determination of legislative purpose.” Edwards, 482 U.S. at

594. Here, as in Wallace, it does. The only two operative

words the amendment contains, the only two words it added

to the Pledge, are the words “under God.” The Pledge remains

exactly the same except for the insertion of the two new

words. Only the most extreme sophistry could permit a reading of those words, “under God,” that carries anything but a

predominantly religious meaning and a predominantly religious purpose. 

To be precise, the ordinary and plain meaning of the word

“God” is undeniably religious.59 So it was in the beginning, is

now, and ever shall be. Even the majority concedes that

59E.g., RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE 606 (1979)

(“God . . . n. 1. the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.”). 

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examining the words “under God” in isolation would reveal

a meaning that “could not be anything but religious.” Maj. op.

at 3903. Yet despite acknowledging that the purpose inquiry

requires us to examine “the plain meaning of the statute’s

words,” id. at 3894, the majority purports somewhat incoherently to examine “Congress’ reasons for ‘the plain meaning

of the statute’s words,’ ” id. (emphasis added), and to find in

the context of the religious phrase a meaning directly opposite

to its plain meaning. In so doing, the majority declines to

apply the meaning of the words themselves, but instead substitutes a statutory purpose of its own making. 

The majority asserts that although “the words ‘under God’

have religious significance,” maj. op. at 3890, the phrase

“under God” in the Pledge conveys nothing more than the

secular principle that “our nation is founded upon the concept

of a limited government,” id. at 3909, an odd proposition that

occurred to none of the authors or supporters of the amendment. Indeed, a simple reading of the legislative history, and

specifically the Congressional Record pertaining to the 1954

amendment, would make it clear to any reasonable person,

even to one who could not grasp the plain meaning of the

words “under God,” that the phrase as used in the amendment

is a religious phrase deliberately inserted in the Pledge of

Allegiance by Congress for a religious purpose. The congressional authors and supporters of the amendment did not conceal their purpose; they proclaimed it proudly. Congress

unequivocally professed its desire to promote religion and

faith in a Supreme Being; it did not even hint at the idea that

the amendment was intended to proclaim that this country had

a government of limited powers. 

The majority’s concession that “under God” is in fact a religious phrase simply highlights the absurdity of its argument

that, when added to the Pledge, the phrase suddenly became

a reference to “limited government.” Id. at 3909. Nothing in

the plain meaning of the words “under God,” the legislative

history of the statutory amendment, or the history of the

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events leading up to its adoption in any way suggests any

such meaning. With all due respect to my colleagues, their

“limited government” argument is pure poppycock, fabricated

by the members of the majority in order to obfuscate the

issues before us and supported by neither the words of the

amendment nor the purpose expressed by Congress. Whether

added to the Pledge, inserted into a high school civics textbook, or used in any other manner, the religious phrase “under

God” sets forth the proposition, not that our government is

one of limited powers, but that our country is subordinate to

the deity that rules over us — as in “Lord, our God, ruler of

the universe.”

60 The majority’s hapless attempt to give the

phrase “under God” a predominantly secular construction

serves only to underscore the fact that no relevant distinction

between 

Wallace and this case can be drawn, and that the majority’s

determination to reach the result it does knows no intellectual

bounds. 

As in Wallace, once the original statute and its amendment

are compared, or as that case puts it, laid side by side, the

amendment’s religious purpose must become clear even to the

members of the majority. In Wallace, Justice O’Connor found

it particularly “notable that Alabama already had a moment

of silence statute before it enacted” its amendment adding the

words “voluntary prayer.” Wallace, 472 U.S. at 77

(O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment). So too, here, the

United States already had a patriotic Pledge of Allegiance

before Congress added the words “under God” to it in 1954.

Indeed, it is hard to “identif[y] any secular purpose that was

not fully served by” the original Pledge “before the enactment

of” its amendment. Id. at 59 (majority opinion) (emphasis

added). The majority contends that the original Pledge did not

adequately express the secular notion of “limited government,” but, as I have already pointed out, it is sheer sophistry

to suggest that the words “one nation under God” somehow

60In Hebrew, Adonai Eloheinu Melekh Ha-Olam. 

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mean a nation with a “limited government,” rather than a

nation subordinate to a higher religious being, or that the

words “under God” were added to the Pledge for some other

secular purpose. Certainly none of the amendment’s sponsors

or supporters ever expressed so extraordinary an idea; indeed,

they made it clear that their purpose was quite the opposite —

to proclaim our nation’s dedication to the Almighty. See infra

Part IV.A.2. 

The majority also suggests that the amendment to the

Pledge advances the secular purpose of steeling Americans’

hearts and minds against Communism. But, again, it is difficult to see how this secular purpose “was not fully served” by

the original Pledge, Wallace, 472 U.S. at 59, which, like the

current Pledge, emphatically began with the words, “I pledge

allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.” In the

midst of the Cold War, could there possibly have been a more

forceful renunciation of the foreign doctrine of Communism?

The man who wrote the Pledge certainly did not think so. In

the 1920s, Francis Bellamy, who at that time was very “preoccup[ied] with subversives and radicals” in America, “especially German-Americans . . . Communists, ‘Bolshevists,’ and

anarchists,” wrote a manifesto that “spelled out his vision of

how the Pledge of Allegiance” — that is, the original Pledge

of Allegiance, without the words “under God” — “could be

used to promote patriotism and ward off un-Americanism.”

ELLIS, supra note 5, at 68-71 (emphasis added). Bellamy’s

understanding of the words that he authored confirms the

obvious: a pledge of allegiance to a national flag is, by definition, supremely patriotic. Except in theocracies, such a pledge

does not become more patriotic by amending it to include a

personal affirmation of belief in God.61

61Interestingly, thirteen states plus the commonwealth of Puerto Rico

have enacted their own official pledges of allegiance. One state, Tennessee, has enacted two. Each of these pledges expresses the declarant’s patriotic pride in and love for his state or commonwealth. However, of all

fifteen pledges, only five contain any mention of God or of religion. Com4000 NEWDOW v. RIO LINDA USD

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As the dissenting Chief Justice in Wallace stated, the

court’s opinion in that case “render[s] the [amended] Pledge

unconstitutional . . . . That [must] be the consequence of [its]

method of focusing on the difference between [the current

statute] and its predecessor statute . . . .” Wallace, 472 U.S.

at 88 (Burger, C.J., dissenting). Chief Justice Burger was correct, at least to the extent that public schoolchildren may not

be subjected to the daily state-directed, teacher-led recitation

of the version of the Pledge that includes the words “under

God” as added by the statutory amendment. Rather, when the

Pledge is recited by schoolchildren in such circumstances, it

must be the traditional, purely patriotic version that they

recited for decades prior to the enactment of the 1954 religious amendment. 

The majority, however, seeks to avoid Wallace’s dispositive effect, employing three different tactics in its effort to

escape the necessary consequence of its reasoning and holding. First, the majority argues that the plaintiffs here lack the

standing to challenge the 1954 amendment that added “under

God” to the Pledge. Maj. op. at 3880-81. Second, it implies

that Wallace has been effectively overruled. Id. at 3887-92.

Finally, it purports to apply Wallace without ever actually

applying its reasoning or holding. Id. at 3892-93. Each of

these tactics is more contorted than the one that precedes it,

pare ALA. CODE § 1-2A-2 (2009) (no mention of God); ARK. CODE ANN.

§ 1-4-102 (2008) (same); GA. CODE ANN. § 50-3-2 (2009) (same); MICH.

COMP. LAWS § 2.29 (1979) (same); N.C. GEN. STAT. § 144-8 (2009)

(same); OHIO REV. CODE ANN. § 5.013 (West 2009) (same); P.R. LAWS

ANN. tit. 1, § 33a (2006) (same); S.C. CODE ANN. § 1-1-670 (2007) (same);

S.D. CODIFIED LAWS § 1-6-4.1 (2008) (same), with KY. REV. STAT. ANN.

§ 2.035 (West 2008) (“grace from on High”); LA. REV. STAT. ANN.

§ 49:167 (2003) (“under God”); MISS. CODE ANN. § 37-13-7 (2008)

(“under the guidance of Almighty God”); TEX. GOV’T CODE ANN.

§ 3100.101 (Vernon 2008) (“under God”). Tennessee has two state

pledges of allegiance, one of which mentions God and one of which does

not. See TENN. CODE. ANN. § 4-1-329 (2009). 

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and none even colorably provides any basis for freeing the

majority from its obligation to follow binding Supreme Court

law. 

The majority’s first attempt to avoid the result compelled

by Wallace is simply a diversion. The majority haplessly

argues that Jan Roe and her daughter lack the standing to

challenge the 1954 amendment “because nothing in the

Pledge actually requires anyone to recite it,” and therefore

plaintiffs cannot show that its wording “causes them to suffer

any concrete and particularized injury.” Maj. op. at 3881.62

The majority repeatedly emphasizes that no direct challenge

to the wording of the Pledge is before us on appeal, and

explains that “[o]nly California Education Code § 52720 and

the School District’s Policy are at issue in this case.” Id. at

3880. How, then, does the majority manage to “hold that the

Pledge of Allegiance does not violate the Establishment

Clause”? Id. at 3877 (emphasis added). Has the majority

admitted to rendering an unconstitutional advisory opinion? 

The answer, of course, is that the plaintiffs have challenged

the “under God” version of the Pledge as applied to them

through the School District’s policy. Accord maj. op. at 3884

(“Because the School District’s Policy states that recitation of

the Pledge will fulfill the policy, we also examine the Pledge

itself.”). Accordingly, all of the effort the majority expends

discussing the Roes’ standing with respect to the 1954 amendment is entirely beside the point. No one disputes that Jan Roe

and her daughter do have standing to challenge the application to them of the amendment at issue: the state-directed,

teacher-led, daily recitation of the religious version of the

Pledge in California’s public schools. “The Supreme Court

62The majority goes on to explain why it believes that Michael Newdow, who is no longer a party to this lawsuit, does not have standing to

challenge the Pledge amendment. Maj. op. at 3880-81. Newdow’s claims

were dismissed by the district court, the dismissal was not appealed, and

the claims are therefore not before us on this appeal. 

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has repeatedly found federal jurisdiction for challenges to the

activities of state agencies administering federal programs

. . . . It has not mattered a jurisdictional whit that the agency

was enforcing federal statutes, as well as pursuing state ends.”

63

Green v. Dumke, 480 F.2d 624, 628 (9th Cir. 1973) (citing

cases). Here, Congress explicitly intended the “under God”

version of the Pledge of Allegiance to be employed as a tool

of religious indoctrination by state employees in state institutions — i.e., public school teachers in public schools. In so

doing, it embarked on “a federal-state cooperative venture,”

id.; see also id. at n.6, a venture that when carried out every

morning in Roe’s daughter’s classroom creates precisely the

constitutional injury Roe and her daughter allege. The majority’s confused and internally inconsistent discussion of standing thus at best misperceives the nature of the inquiry before

us. At worst, it is a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the fact

that Wallace squarely controls the merits of this case. 

Before embarking on its second effort to avoid Wallace, the

majority notes that the Wallace Court found evidence of an

impermissible religious purpose not only in the “textual difference” between the original statute and the subsequent

amendment, but also in the legislative history of the amendment; the amendment sponsor’s testimony in district court;

the court documents filed by the governor who signed the

amendment into law; and a prayer statute passed one year

after the amendment’s adoption. Maj. op. at 3886. One might

expect, based on this explanation of Wallace, that the majority

would go on to examine not only the textual difference

between the 1954 amendment and the original Pledge statute,

but also the legislative history of the 1954 amendment; the

public comments of Representative Rabaut, the amendment’s

sponsor, and the statements of President Eisenhower, who

signed the amendment into law; as well as the other

religiously-motivated laws passed within two years of the

63Standing is, of course, a “jurisdictional question.” E.g., Steel Co., 523

U.S. at 86. 

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amendment’s adoption. See infra Part IV.A.2; see also supra

Parts III.B-C. Each of those sources compels the same conclusion: the 1954 Congress added “under God” to the Pledge for

an overwhelmingly religious purpose. None of these sources,

however, is examined by the majority. 

Unwilling to reach the result that Wallace would dictate,

the majority, after ignoring the sources of information that

Wallace identified as relevant, goes even further. It abandons

its acknowledgment that Wallace requires an examination of

the two words introduced by the Pledge amendment, and

reverts to its original claim that we must “examine the Pledge

as a whole.” Maj. op. at 3886. Although the majority does not

provide a coherent explanation for its abrupt change in course,

it appears to contend that Wallace has been tacitly overruled

by later Supreme Court decisions. Specifically, the majority

appears to assert that more recent Supreme Court cases have

made “context” the touchstone of the Lemon analysis and that

“context” now refers solely to the objects or words immediately surrounding the religious item or phrase being challenged — here, the twenty-nine other words in the Pledge of

Allegiance surrounding the words “under God.” In short, the

majority’s statement that the issue is the constitutionality of

the Pledge as a whole, rather than the constitutionality of the

amendment, is directly contrary to Wallace. 

As an initial matter, I note that it is the Supreme Court’s

“prerogative alone to overrule one of its precedents.” State Oil

Co. v. Khan, 522 U.S. 3, 20 (1997). My colleagues have no

authority to “conclude [that the Supreme Court’s] more recent

cases have, by implication, overruled an earlier precedent.”

Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203, 237 (1997). To the contrary,

“the Court of Appeals on its own authority should [not]

take[ ] the step of renouncing” Supreme Court decisions; “[i]f

a precedent of th[e Supreme] Court has direct application in

a case . . . the Court of Appeals should follow the case which

directly controls,” even if it believes, mistakenly or otherwise,

that the controlling Supreme Court authority “appears to rest

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on reasons rejected in some other line of decisions.”

64 Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/Am. Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477,

484 (1989). Here, far from being implicitly “rejected in some

other line of decisions,” Wallace’s reasoning and holding as

to how to evaluate, for Establishment Clause purposes, an

amendment to a statute, has been consistently and repeatedly

reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the intervening decades

since it was decided.65 So, disregarding all those cases, my

colleagues simply proceed with their untenable argument in

derogation of another set of controlling Supreme Court decisions. 

In suggesting, probably out of a feeling of necessity, that

Wallace has been overruled by some new definition of “context,” my colleagues do not rely on a majority opinion from

the Supreme Court, or even on an opinion by a minority composed of one or more justices, involving an amendment to a

statute. Rather, they rely on Justice Breyer’s one-judge opinion concurring in the judgment in Van Orden v. Perry, 545

U.S. 677, 698 (2005) (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment),

relating to an entirely different matter. Maj. op. at 3891, 3893.

In Van Orden, Justice Breyer analyzed the constitutionality of

the placement of a monument of the Ten Commandments on

government property and considered a number of factors,

such as its relationship to other monuments on the same prop64Until now, the decisions of our circuit have reflected a strict adherence

to this principle. See, e.g., United States v. Grisel, 488 F.3d 844, 847 (9th

Cir. 2007) (en banc) (“The fact that the Supreme Court has expressed

some ambivalence about its own jurisprudence does not give us the power

to change it.”); Hart v. Massanari, 266 F.3d 1155, 1171 (9th Cir. 2001)

(“A decision of the Supreme Court will control that corner of the law

unless and until the Supreme Court itself overrules or modifies it. Judges

of the inferior courts may voice their criticisms, but follow it they must.”).

65See, e.g., McCreary, 545 U.S. at 859-60 & n.9 (2005); Santa Fe, 530

U.S. at 316 (2000); Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 532 (1993); Texas Monthly, Inc. v. Bullock, 489 U.S.

1, 9 (1989); Edwards, 482 U.S. at 583-89 (1987); Witters v. Wash. Dep’t

of Servs. for the Blind, 474 U.S. 481, 485-86 (1986). 

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erty. However, that case is in no way relevant to the question

presented in Wallace or to the case presently before us. Justice Breyer’s concurrence did not relate to the interpretation

of a statute and certainly not to how courts should determine

the purpose and intent of amendments to statutory provisions,

which, of course, was the question in Wallace and is the question here. Indeed, given that hanging copies of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms indisputably violates

the Constitution, see Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980)

(per curiam), it is clear that Justice Breyer’s concurrence in

Van Orden regarding the placement of a monument containing those commandments on the grounds of the Texas State

Capitol has no bearing whatsoever on the state-directed,

teacher-led daily recitation of the religious version of the

Pledge in public schools. Moreover, this court has already

held in Card v. City of Everett, 520 F.3d 1009, 1021 (9th Cir.

2008), that Van Orden must be limited to facts “closely analogous” to the placement of monuments on public land. Not

only are the facts in Van Orden wholly unlike the facts in the

case before us, but the legal questions involved are far different. Thus, the factors to which we look in our consideration

of context must, as our court has already held, id., necessarily

be considerably different. 

Under the majority’s new constitutional definition of “context,” the government may undertake any religious act so long

as the preexisting nonreligious acts that are somehow related

to the new act remain in effect. This approach is entirely

inconsistent with common sense as well as with Establishment Clause jurisprudence.66 For example, if Congress

66Indeed, one of the members of the majority should be well aware of

why the approach is unreasonable: 

The majority’s context argument is that Good Friday’s placement

on the roll of public holidays amidst secular days diminishes its

endorsing effect. . . . . Such an argument cannot be maintained.

. . . . [U]nder the majority’s context rationale, the state could

decide tomorrow that all of holy week or any of the numerous

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decided to carve the face of Jesus onto Mount Rushmore, that

act would certainly be unconstitutional despite the presence

on that Mount of four nonreligious faces. It is the religious

nature of the governmental action, not the previously secular

context within which that action is placed, that determines the

constitutionality of such a change. Under the majority’s reasoning, it would be of no consequence whether Congress had

inserted the words “under God,” or the words “under Jesus,”

or “under the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost” into the

Pledge of Allegiance, given the Pledge’s otherwise secular or

patriotic context. The Pledge is a patriotic not a religious

exercise, the majority tells us, and therefore a religious message may be inserted. Yet surely, not even the majority would

hold that the insertion of the two additional religious phrases

set forth above would be consistent with the Establishment

Clause. 

Finally, after spending eight pages attempting to replace

Wallace’s reasoning with its new definition of “context,” and

a total of twenty-nine pages arguing that we must examine the

Pledge “as a whole,” the majority ultimately purports to

acknowledge that it must apply Wallace to the “under God”

amendment itself — an effort to which it devotes a mere two

sentences. Maj. op at 3893-94. One “who has a good conscience doesn’t walk so fast.”

67 Indeed, the only two sentences

saints’ days should be holidays and that their placement on the

holiday roll would be balanced by all the other secular holidays.

. . . . [But t]he reason that the holiday roll is filled with patriotic

and secular days is because the state may not make any laws

respecting the establishment of religion. 

Cammack v. Waihee, 932 F.2d 765, 787 (9th Cir. 1991) (D. Nelson, J., dissenting). 

67GEORG BÜCHNER, WOYZECK (Karl Emil Franzos ed., 1879), reprinted

and translated in, DAVID GLEYRE RICHARDS, GEORG BÜCHNER AND THE BIRTH

OF THE MODERN DRAMA 226 (1977). 

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in which the majority explains how Wallace applies to this

case are rife with error and without legal support:68

Focusing, as we must, on how the text of the statute

is used, Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 701 (Breyer, J. concurring), we see that the addition of “or voluntary

prayer” to the statute in Wallace was used to encourage students to participate in a religious exercise —

the very prayer enacted [one year later]. Here, the

addition of “under God” was used to describe an

attribute of the Republic, “one Nation under God” —

a reference to the historical and religious traditions

of our country, not a personal affirmation through

prayer or invocation that the speaker believes in

God.

Id. In the end, the majority’s “analysis” consists only of a

conclusion announced ex cathedra. 

In sum, the majority fails in its duty to follow Wallace; it

cannot declare the case overruled or replace the Court’s reasoning with its own contrary rationale. Under Wallace, the

majority is required to examine, rather than ignore, the text of

the amendment. An examination of that text and the plain

meaning of its words clearly reveals the explicitly religious

purpose motivating the amendment to the Pledge. The words

“under God” are undeniably religious, and the addition to the

Pledge of Allegiance of words with so plain a religious meaning cannot be said, simply because it might assist the majority

in obtaining its objective, to be for a purpose that is predominantly secular. The words certainly were not inserted for the

purpose of “reinforc[ing] the idea that our nation is founded

68As an example of its legal errors, it asserts that the phrase “under

God” in the Pledge is not a personal affirmation of the speaker’s belief in

God, despite the Supreme Court’s explicit recognition in a case that binds

us here that “[the] pledge requires affirmation of a belief.” W. Va. State

Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 633 (1943). 

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upon the concept of a limited government.” Maj. op. at 3909.

As I have stated earlier in this dissent and as I reiterate here,

the suggestion by the majority that the purpose of inserting

the phrase “under God” into the Pledge was to remind us that

we have a “limited government” finds no support in the

record and is wholly without merit. 

Wallace explicitly requires us to compare the original statute to the amended form and to examine what the amendment

has added. Where the addition is religious, the addition must

be invalidated. Here, Wallace unquestionably requires us to

strike down as unconstitutional the state-directed, teacher-led

daily recitation of the “under God” language in the Pledge of

Allegiance in the public schools. Omitting the two words

added by the 1954 amendment and returning to the recitation

of the secular version of the Pledge that was used in public

schools for decades prior to the adoption of the amendment

would cure the violation of the Establishment Clause at issue

here.

2.

As I have explained above, the majority, in determining the

purpose of the amendment, refuses to give the words “under

God” their plain meaning, as required by Wallace, 472 U.S.

at 58, by Edwards, 482 U.S. at 594, and by McCreary, 545

U.S. at 862, and indeed by elementary principles of statutory

interpretation. As I have also explained, the majority has

refused to follow controlling Supreme Court law with respect

to examining the “context” of the amendment. Compare Wallace, 472 U.S. at 58-61 with maj. op. at 3886-92. In addition,

the majority’s treatment of legislative history, which would

alone be dispositive of the constitutionality of the “under

God” amendment as applied, is even more startling, and is at

least as defiant of binding precedent. Fully cognizant of the

damning evidence contained in the pages of the Congressional

Record and of the conclusion that the evidence compels, the

majority boldly asserts that we are legally prohibited from so

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much as considering the numerous, indeed unanimous, proreligion statements offered by every senator and representative who spoke on the subject of including the words “under

God” in the Pledge of Allegiance. Maj. op. at 3895, 3912. All

who spoke, as noted earlier, favored the insertion of the words

and none opposed the proposal. The majority cites McCreary,

545 U.S. at 867-68, for the proposition that we may not consider “the statement of one or more individual members of

Congress, but [only] what the committees putting forth the

amendment actually stated.”

69 Maj. op. at 3912. Nothing in

McCreary remotely supports that assertion. What that binding

Supreme Court precedent does state is that we must “rel[y] on

a statute’s text and the detailed public comments of its

sponsor[s], when we [examine] the purpose of a state law”

challenged on Establishment Clause grounds.70 McCreary,

69The majority cites Mergens as additional support for this proposition,

but fails to acknowledge that the portion of Mergens on which it relies did

not command a majority of the Supreme Court. Maj. op. at 3912 (citing

Bd. of Educ. v. Mergens, 496 U.S. 226, 248-49 (1990) (opinion of

O’Connor, J.)); see also id. at 3895 (same). Moreover, that plurality opinion simply stated that courts should not attempt to divine the “possibly

religious motives of the legislators who enacted [a] law” when those

motives are unclear or inconclusive. Mergens, 496 U.S. at 249 (opinion

of O’Connor, J.) (emphasis added). The legislative history in Mergens at

most showed only what “some senators may have thought.” Id. at 243

(majority opinion). This case of course is the polar opposite. See supra

Part II. 

70Even in “ordinary” cases of statutory interpretation that do not implicate constitutional questions, the Supreme Court regularly examines both

the official reports accompanying a bill as well as the statements of legislators memorialized in the Congressional Record. See, e.g., Atherton v.

FDIC, 519 U.S. 213, 228-30 (1997); cf. Carpenters Health & Welfare

Trust Funds v. Robertson, 53 F.3d 1064, 1067 n.7 (9th Cir. 1995). Indeed,

Justice Scalia has criticized, in dissent, the Court’s practice of “often [relying on] legislative history” comprised of “[t]he Congressional Record or

committee reports.” Koons Buick Pontiac GMC, Inc. v. Nigh, 543 U.S. 50,

73 (2004) (Scalia, J., dissenting). Were this court to adopt Justice Scalia’s

approach and rely strictly on a textual analysis, the resolution of the

inquiry before us would be even more clear, if that is possible. Giving

“God” its standard, plain meaning, no one could deny that the term “under

God” is a religious term, a term that must be presumed to have been

inserted into the previously nonreligious Pledge for religious purposes. See

Am. Tobacco Co., 456 U.S. at 68. 

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545 U.S. at 862 (emphasis added) (citing Edwards, 482 U.S.

at 586-88). I agree with the majority that “[w]hat motivates

one legislator to make a speech about a statute is not necessarily what motivates scores of others to enact it.” Maj. op. at

3911 n.27 (quoting United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367,

384 (1968)). However, the Supreme Court has stated that in

the ordinary course of determining “the interpretation of legislation, the Court will look to statements by legislators for

guidance as to the purpose of the legislature.”

71 O’Brien, 391

U.S. at 383 (emphasis added). Accordingly, when not only

one legislator makes a speech expressing an explicitly religious purpose for enacting a law but “scores of others” unanimously, vociferously and zealously echo that very same

purpose, we are not permitted to ignore such powerful evidence of legislative intent. When “openly available data support[ ] a commonsense conclusion that a religious objective

permeated the government’s action,” McCreary, 545 U.S. at

863, the congressional purpose may be said to be undeniably

religious.

Were the majority willing to follow controlling Supreme

Court precedent and to acknowledge the legislative history of

the Pledge that is detailed in this opinion, it could not deny

that the history uniformly and overwhelmingly demonstrates

a predominant religious purpose for the 1954 amendment.

Here, the legislative history shows lockstep unanimity — each

and every senator and representative to comment on the addition of the words “under God” to the Pledge unequivocally

and zealously proclaimed religious motivations for his

actions. See supra Part II. The unanimous, uncontradicted

words of our legislators are clear: “under God” was inserted

71The majority fails to acknowledge this statement in O’Brien despite

quoting the sentence that immediately follows it. Maj. op. at 3911 n.27.

Although the majority’s selective and misleading quotations might suggest

otherwise, O’Brien only cautioned against relying on the statements of

“fewer than a handful of Congressmen” to divine legislative intent. 391

U.S. at 384 (emphasis added).

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in the Pledge to further the religious views and principles of

millions of Americans, to reinforce their belief that God exists

and to promote faith in his Being, indeed to reflect that we are

subordinate to his Will. To those citizens who might be in

doubt, the words were intended to let them know that such

were the views and principles of all “true Americans,” to

indoctrinate them firmly in those American beliefs, and to try

to resolve the doubts they might possess. Most pertinent here,

the words were inserted in the Pledge so that schoolchildren

throughout the land would repeat them daily and become

imbued with the religious concepts that guided the authors

and sponsors of the amendment, the other members of Congress, and the President of the United States. As Senator

Wiley proclaimed, the lawmakers believed that there could be

no “better training for our youngsters . . . than to have them,

each time they pledge allegiance to Old Glory, reassert their

belief, like that of their fathers and their fathers before them,

in the all-present, all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful Creator.” 100 Cong. Rec. 5915. Accordingly, as President Eisenhower declared when he signed the Pledge amendment into

law, the lawmakers intended that “[f]rom [that] day forward,

the millions of our school children [would] daily proclaim in

every city and town, every village and rural school house, the

dedication of our Nation and our people to the Almighty.” Id.

at 8618. 

Indeed, when the drafters of the enactment offered a legal

justification in defense of that statute’s validity under the First

Amendment, they did not deny that the amendment was religious in nature, but simply contended that the religious act on

the part of the government was not prohibited by the Establishment Clause. Specifically, the Senate Report asserts:

Adoption of the resolution would in no way run contrary to the provisions of the first amendment to the

Constitution. This is not an act establishing a religion. A distinction exists between the church as an

institution and a belief in the sovereignty of God.

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The phrase “under God” recognizes only the guidance of God in our national affairs . . . . Neither will

this resolution violate the right of any person to disbelieve in God or reject the existence of God. The

recognition of God in the pledge of allegiance to the

flag of our Nation does not compel any individual to

make a positive affirmation in the existence of God

in whom one does not believe.72

As any law student will quickly recognize, both of the justifications put forward in the Senate Report declaring the enactment constitutional have since that time been flatly rejected

by the Supreme Court: It is indisputable that the First Amendment prevents more than simply the establishment of a statesponsored “Church as an institution” and that the Bill of

Rights’ protections extend beyond those instances in which

the government actually “compels an individual to make a

positive affirmation” of a religious belief. See, e.g., Everson

v. Bd. of Educ. of Ewing, 330 U.S. 1, 15 (1947); Abington,

374 U.S. at 233 (Brennan, J., concurring)(“[N]othing in the

text of the Establishment Clause supports the view that the

prevention of the setting up of an official church was meant

to be the full extent of the prohibitions against official

involvements in religion.”); see also Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S.

421, 430 (1962) (“The Establishment Clause . . . does not

depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion

and is violated . . . whether . . . laws operate directly to coerce

nonobserving individuals or not.”). Moreover, when we consider, as we do here, the application of the amendment to the

state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the amended

Pledge in public schools, it is clear that the plaintiff and other

like-minded children are compelled “to make a positive affirmation in the existence of God in whom [they do] not

72S. REP. No. 83-1287, at 2 (1954) (emphases added), reprinted in 100

Cong. Rec. 6231; accord H.R. REP. No. 83-1693, at 3, reprinted in 1954

U.S.C.C.A.N. 2339, 2342 (citing Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U.S. 306, 312-13

(1952)). 

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believe,” or to become “outsiders, not full members of the . . .

community.”

73 Either way, they are deprived of their constitutional rights. See infra Part III.C. When the unconstitutional

rationales for Congress’s enactment are stripped away, nothing remains, and the explanation in the Senate Report as to

why including the religious phrase “under God” in the Pledge

is constitutional is shown to be without legal foundation.74

73Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 309 (quoting Lynch, 465 U.S. at 688 (O’Connor,

J., concurring)). 

74The legislators inserted their “justification” into the legislative record

in order to respond to concerns about the proposed enactment’s constitutionality. Such concerns were raised as early as Reverend Docherty’s first

sermon, delivered in 1952, suggesting that the words “under God” be

added to the Pledge. See supra note 11. I also noted previously the concerns that existed in Congress, where some senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee “had concerns about the resolution’s implications for the

separation of church and state.” ELLIS, supra note 5, at 134 & 257 n.40.

Once the bill was taken up by Congress, its constitutionality was questioned widely by the public. See, e.g., Andrew Menick, Letter to the Editor, L.A. TIMES, June 10, 1954, at A4 (“The pledge is an oath of loyalty

. . . . It is not a confession of religious belief nor should it be . . . .”); C.S.

Longacre, Letter to the Editor, WASH. POST, May 23, 1954, at B4 (“The

current bill pending in Congress to insert the phrase ‘under God’ into the

American Pledge of Allegiance has dangerous implications . . . . I see

grave danger in . . . [the] law by a civil government that is pledged under

our Constitution not to legislate upon religious matters.”); Kenneth H.

Bonnell, Letter to the Editor, L.A. TIMES, May 30, 1954, at B4 (“I protest

the inclusion of the words ‘under God’ in the pledge of allegiance. The

inclusion of these words is a violation of the principle of separation of

church and state.”); Richard S. Sartz, Letter to the Editor, WASH. POST,

May 27, 1954, at 16 (“The insertion of ‘under God’ into the pledge [is]

indeed . . . disturbing . . . . [The] freedom of religion in[ ] our Constitution

. . . mean[s] freedom to believe according to one’s own convictions,

whether or not this include[s] the worship of a God.”).

In the legislators’ defense, many of the core Supreme Court precedents

clarifying the Establishment Clause’s requirements and demonstrating the

deficiency of Congress’s purported constitutional justification for the

amendment were handed down after 1954. Prior to that time, the extent of

the Constitution’s prohibition against religious activity by the government

was less explicitly delineated. Cf. Everson v. Bd. of Educ. of Ewing, 330

U.S. 1, 15 (1947); supra note 12. The supporters of the amendment obvi4014 NEWDOW v. RIO LINDA USD

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Finally, to the extent that “the circumstances surrounding

[the] enactment,” Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 315, are relevant here,

the circumstances further support the obvious conclusion that

the words “under God” exist in the Pledge to serve an overwhelmingly religious purpose. For starters, we have an enactment that was literally drafted in the pulpit: As the primary

legislative sponsors of the 1954 Act all proudly proclaimed,

Reverend Docherty “put God in [the] Pledge.”

75 There can be

no denying the tremendous impact of the Reverend who

declared “theological war . . . against modern, secularized,

godless humanity” — a war that Congress adopted as its own

when it rewrote the Pledge of Allegiance. The majority dismisses the impact Docherty had on his powerful congregation

— which included the man who wrote the primary “under

God” bill as well as the President who signed it — because

“Reverend Docherty was never elected to office.” Maj. op. at

3911 n.27. He was never elected, but Congress enthusiastically endorsed his proposal and wrote it into law, telling the

nation plainly and clearly that it was his, and why it was

adopting it. Moreover, in directing us to look at the “circumstances 

surrounding” a statute’s enactment, Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 315

(emphasis added), the Supreme Court tells us not to limit our

inquiry to the motivations of the elected officials who actually

enacted the statute. Nor are we supposed to ignore the sociopolitical climate of the time: During the two years surroundously did not comprehend the full extent of the Establishment Clause’s

prohibitions and thus had no reason to attempt to conceal that their purpose was predominantly, indeed entirely, religious. In fact, for that reason,

they proclaimed their purpose proudly. Of course, the legislators’ inaccurate view of the law has no bearing on the merits of the plaintiffs’ claim

in this case. The congressmen who segregated the schools in Washington,

D.C. did so without the benefit of Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S.

483 (1954), or Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954), but the segregation

of the schools was certainly impermissible after those rulings all the same.

75Kenneth Dale, Put God in Flag Pledge, Pastor Urges, WASH. POST,

Feb. 8, 1954, at 12; see also supra p. 24. 

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ing the adoption of the revised version of the Pledge,

Congress passed a law adding the words “In God We Trust”

to all paper money, replaced “E Pluribus Unum” with “In God

We Trust” as the national motto, mandated an annual National

Day of Prayer that continues to this day,76 constructed a

prayer room onsite at the Capitol building, and entertained,

though it ultimately rejected, a constitutional amendment that

read: “This nation devoutly recognizes the authority and law

of Jesus Christ, Saviour and Ruler of Nations, through whom

are bestowed the blessings of Almighty God.” See ELLIS,

supra note 5, at 126. In this historical context, “[i]nserting the

words ‘under God’ into the Pledge of Allegiance . . . must be

understood as only one of many actions taken in the early

years of the Eisenhower presidency that were designed to

inject religious faith into public life.” Id. at 126-27. The public recognized this reality far more clearly than do my two

colleagues in the majority: Thousands of citizens wrote to

their congressmen expressing their view that the new version

of the Pledge “reflected a spiritual awakening in our country.”

100 Cong. Rec. 7761.77

76In 2009, the President of the United States drew criticism from some

quarters for his decision to mark the National Day of Prayer by communing privately with his God instead of using his elected office to exhort others to pray. See Obama’s Decision to Observe National Day of Prayer

Privately Draws Public Criticism, FOX NEWS, May 6, 2009,

http://tinyurl.com/FoxNewsPrayerDay. Others, however, saw the President’s decision not to proselytize for his personal religious views as a restoration of the constitutionally mandated distinction between our elected

political leaders and our pastors, priests, rabbis and imams. See Kristi

Keck, Obama Tones Down National Day of Prayer Observance, CNN,

May 6, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/CNNPrayerDay. 

77It is worth noting that, these statements in the Congressional Record

notwithstanding, national opinion regarding the new version of the Pledge

was hardly unanimous. According to a Gallup poll, twenty-one percent of

the country opposed the change, with sixty-nine percent in favor and ten

percent expressing no opinion. George Gallup, ‘Under God’ Favored in

Flag Oath, L.A. TIMES, May 11, 1953, at 25. In the 1950s, a twenty-one

percent disapproval rating reflected approximately thirty-five million

Americans opposed to inserting “under God” into the Pledge. See Frank

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Hobs & Nicole Stoops, U.S. Census Bureau, Demographic Trends in the

20th Century 11 (2002), available at http://www.census.gov/prod/

2002pubs/censr-4.pdf. 

Nor was there unanimity among religious denominations regarding the

legislation. In light of the strong Christian overtones surrounding the

Pledge amendment, “Jews were substantially less likely to support the

change, [though] a clear majority [still] favored [it].” ELLIS, supra note 5,

at 131 (2005). The American Unitarian Association went so far as to pass

a resolution expressing its disapproval of the revision to the Pledge on the

ground that it “was an invasion of religious liberty.” Congress Proposals

Hit by Unitarians, N.Y. TIMES, May 22, 1954, at 29. Speaking before the

association, Washington author and civic leader Agnes Meyer said that

“[t]he frenzy which has seized America to legislate Christianity into peoples [sic] consciousness by spurious methods . . . will harm the Christian

religion more than the persecution it is now suffering under the tyranny

of Communists.” Surpass Orthodoxy, Christianity Urged, N.Y. TIMES,

May 23, 1954, at 30. 

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In sum, even aside from the plain meaning of the words

“under God” and the context in which we are required to

examine them, the legislative history of the amendment to the

Pledge and the surrounding circumstances provide overwhelming evidence that the state-directed, teacher-led, daily

recitation of its religious version in public schools cannot possibly pass muster under any sound application of the Lemon

test. The unanimous statements made by every legislator to

speak in the House and Senate and included in the official

legislative reports unabashedly announced that the purpose of

including the words “under God” in the Pledge was to “acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government

upon the moral directions of the Creator.” See H.R. Rep. No.

83-1693, at 2 (1954), reprinted in 1954 U.S.C.C.A.N. 2339,

2340. In light of the clear and open declaration of purpose,

there can be no denying that “the enactment exceeds the scope

of legislative power as circumscribed by the Constitution,”

Abington, 374 U.S. at 222, or at the least does so when and

as it is applied to state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation

of the amended Pledge in public schools.

3.

The majority argues that the purpose of the amendment of

the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 was not predominantly religious because the words “under God” are simply a reference

to the limited powers of our national government. That is, of

course, an argument dreamt up by my colleagues that can

nowhere be found in the Congressional Record. In addition,

my colleagues have apparently forgotten that it is the Constitution that sets forth the limitations on government power,

not, as far as our laws are concerned, God. The limitations on

the power of our government are found in the Ninth and

Tenth Amendments, which reserve certain powers to the

states and reserve all other powers not granted to the federal

government to “We the People.” See U.S. CONST. pmbl., art.

I §§ 8, 9, amends. IX, X. The Bill of Rights also limits the

actions the government may take. There is, however, no menNEWDOW v. RIO LINDA USD 4021

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tion of God in the Constitution, nor of the theory that the government has limited powers because it is “under God.”

Indeed, the words “limited government,” as the majority uses

them, appear to constitute an assertion that God granted certain rights to the people and limited the rights that government

could possess. Maj. op. at 3904-05. Right or wrong, this is in

itself an expression of a religious viewpoint, perhaps one with

which most people might agree, but an expression that nevertheless would not further the majority’s argument that the purpose of adding “under God” to the Pledge was secular and not

religious. 

The “omission of a reference to the Deity [from the Constitution] was not inadvertent; nor did it remain unnoticed.” Leo

Pfeffer, The Deity in American Constitutional History, 23 J.

CHURCH & STATE 215, 217 (1981). Although many early

Americans strenuously opposed the Framers’ commitment to

secularism and their decision to break with tradition by omitting God from the text of the Constitution, “[t]he advocates of

the secular state won, and it is their Constitution we revere

today.” ISAAC KRAMNICK & R. LAURENCE MOORE, THE GODLESS

CONSTITUTION 28 (2d ed. 1997).78 The decision by the Founding Fathers cannot be reversed, nor the structure of the Constitution changed, as the majority suggests Congress did by

inserting two words into the Pledge of Allegiance. Nor, certainly, was that the intent of Congress when it sought to promote a belief in God by making that belief a part of the

Pledge. 

78See also, e.g., Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 724 & n.23 (Stevens, J., dissenting) (citing J. HUTSON, RELIGION AND THE FOUNDING OF THE AMERICAN

REPUBLIC 75 (1998) (noting the dearth of references to God at the Philadelphia Convention and that many contemporaneous observers of the Convention complained that “the Framers had unaccountably turned their

backs on the Almighty” because they “found the Constitution without any

acknowledgment of God”)); Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 807

(1983) (Brennan, J., dissenting) (“Even before the First Amendment was

written, the Framers of the Constitution broke with the practice [followed

in] the Articles of Confederation and many state constitutions, and did not

invoke the name of God in the document.”). 

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The majority’s contrived efforts to distort both history and

binding Supreme Court law are inconsistent with our duty as

judges, as defined by the Court. “[I]t is . . . the duty of the

courts to ‘distinguis[h] a sham secular purpose from a sincere

one.’ ” Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 308 (second alteration in original) (quoting Wallace, 472 U.S. at 75 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment)). This duty necessarily bars the courts

themselves from superimposing a sham secular purpose onto

an explicitly religious statute, as the majority does today.79

Twenty years ago, Justice O’Connor declared that she had

“little doubt that our courts are capable of distinguishing a

sham secular purpose from a sincere one.” Wallace, 472 U.S.

at 75 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment). Little did

she anticipate that it would be a court that would create the

sham secular purpose. The majority opinion demonstrates

either that Justice O’Connor’s confidence in the ability of the

courts to distinguish a religious from a secular purpose was

misplaced, or that, even though their constitutional duty is

clear, courts will in some circumstances not only be unwilling

to perform it, but will themselves engage in the very actions

against which she was confident that they would protect us.80

To the extent that, notwithstanding all the controlling legal

principles to the contrary, one could accept the concept

advanced by the majority that a purpose of the insertion of the

words “under God” in the Pledge was to somehow celebrate

our history or remind us that we have a “limited government”

(and it is unlikely that a reasonable judge could do so) it

defies reason to contend that the use of the term God did not

79To be clear, I do not “call[ ] the 2002 Congress’ purpose a sham,” as

the majority claims. Maj. op. at 3913. It is the majority, not Congress, that

has engaged in the fabrication of a sham secular purpose. The majority’s

vague, unsupported, and self-contradictory assertions notwithstanding, the

2002 Congress did not state that either its purpose or that of the 1954 Congress was anything other than religious. See supra Part III.B. 

80See also Myers v. Loudoun County Pub. Schs., 418 F.3d 395 (4th Cir.

2005); Sherman v. Cmty. Consol. Sch. Dist. 21 of Wheeling, 980 F.2d 437

(7th Cir. 1992). 

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have a religious purpose as well. One would have to ignore

all the applicable law and all the relevant facts to reach such

a conclusion. That the predominant purpose was religious is

demonstrated beyond dispute by the legislative history of the

amendment. See supra Part II.A-C. Such a conclusion is also

evident from simple logic and reason. The term “God” is a

religious term in every sense of the word, as the majority

admits. Moreover, the majority suggests no other instance in

which the word “God” was used by a legislative body for a

predominantly non-religious purpose. To conclude that Congress would use the term “God” for a predominantly secular

purpose when amending the Pledge of allegiance surely defies

common sense. 

Under the plain meaning of the words of the amendment to

the Pledge, its context, the legislative history of its enactment,

and all of the surrounding circumstances, there can be no

doubt that the purpose of adding the words “under God” to

the Pledge of Allegiance was predominantly, if not exclusively, religious and that the daily recitation in public schools

of the Pledge in its amended form violates the Lemon test,81

and thus the Establishment Clause.

B. The Endorsement Test and the “Under God”

Amendment

Although an objective application of the Lemon test that

adheres to Supreme Court precedent requires, without more,

a ruling in favor of Jan Roe and her child, I turn now to the

remaining Establishment Clause tests to show that the Roes

would prevail under each of them as well, and that with

respect to each the majority’s reasoning seriously misperceives or misrepresents the nature and function of the First

Amendment. The second Establishment Clause test

81The daily recitations also violate the “effects” prong of the Lemon test.

I will discuss “effects,” however, in connection with the endorsement test.

See infra Part IV.B. 

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announced by the Supreme Court, the endorsement test, is in

essence “a gloss on Lemon that encompasse[s] both the purpose and effect prongs.” Kitzmiller v. Dover Area Sch. Dist.,

400 F. Supp. 2d 707, 714 (M.D. Pa. 2005). Under the

endorsement test, “we must examine both what [the government] intended to communicate . . . and what message [it]

actually conveyed. The purpose and effect prongs of the

Lemon test represent these two aspects of the meaning of the

[government’s] action . . . . An [impermissible] answer to

either question should render the challenged practice invalid.”

Lynch v. Donelly, 465 U.S. 668, 690 (1984) (O’Connor, J.,

concurring). Accordingly, where, as here, a clear violation of

the first Lemon prong exists, so too does a violation of the

endorsement test. Still, the endorsement test is valuable in that

it captures even more forcefully than Lemon the powerful

sense of alienation nonadherents experience when the government embraces and broadcasts a religious belief:

[T]he religious liberty protected by the Establishment Clause is infringed when the government

makes adherence to religion relevant to a person’s

standing in the political community. Direct government action endorsing religion or a particular religious practice is invalid under this approach because

it “sends a message to nonadherents that they are

outsiders, not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that

they are insiders, favored members of the political

community.”

Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S., 38, 69 (1985) (O’Connor, J.,

concurring in the judgment) (emphases added) (quoting

Lynch, 465 U.S. at 688 (O’Connor, J., concurring)); accord

Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe, 530 U.S. 290, 309-10

(2000) (same). How much greater must be the sense of exclusion in the case of a child in a schoolroom — a schoolroom

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adherent, he will no longer be a “full member of the . . . community.” Id.

In conducting the endorsement analysis, “[t]he relevant

question[ ] is whether an objective observer, acquainted with

the text, legislative history, and implementation of the statute,

would perceive it as a state endorsement of [religion].” Santa

Fe, 530 U.S. at 308 (quoting Wallace, 472 U.S. at 76

(O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment)). How could anyone “acquainted with the text and legislative history” of the

statute that amended the Pledge in order to indoctrinate our

children conclude anything other than that the state-directed,

teacher-led daily recitation of the “under God” version of the

Pledge “conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do

not adhere to the favored beliefs”? Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S.

577, 606 (1992) (Blackmun, J., concurring). An atheist familiar with the Pledge’s legislative history could hardly ignore

the legislation’s chief proponents’ statements that “[a]n atheistic American is . . . a contradiction in terms,” 100 Cong.

Rec. 1700, that “the forces of anti-God and antireligion . . .

spread . . . dangerous and insidious propaganda,” id. at 7760,

or that “evil” stems “[f]rom the root of atheism,” id. at 1700.

How could atheist, agnostic, Hindu, or Buddhist children

asked every day by their state employed teachers to recite the

amended version of the Pledge feel anything but “that they are

outsiders,”

82 Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 309, when an author of the

“under God” amendment to the Pledge publicly proclaimed

that people’s “citizenship is of no real value . . . unless [they]

can open [their] souls before God and before Him conscientiously say, ‘I am an American,’ ” or when the President of

the United States has declared that anyone who “truly loves

America” will proudly say the Pledge as amended? 100 Cong.

Rec. 7765, 8618 (emphases added). The effect on young

schoolchildren of the amendment under the policy of the Rio

82See infra note 89 (describing the range of religious beliefs with which

the “under God” version of the Pledge conflicts). 

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Linda school district, and the policies of school districts

throughout the nation, is undeniable. 

The majority agrees that some schoolchildren may perceive

the amended Pledge as an endorsement of religion, but argues

that under Good News Club v. Milford Central School, 533

U.S. 98, 119 (2001), “a child’s understanding cannot be the

basis for our constitutional analysis.” Maj. op. at 3922. The

majority’s reliance on Good News is directly contrary to that

opinion’s express rationale. In Good News, the Court held that

a private group’s use of a public school’s facilities for afterschool religious events would not violate the Establishment

Clause, despite “the possibility that elementary school children may witness the [group’s] activities on school premises.”

Good News, 533 U.S. at 119. It expressly distinguished cases

involving messages conveyed “by state teachers during the

schoolday to children required to attend.” Id. at 117 (emphasis

original). Unlike in those cases, because “members of the

public writ large [were] permitted in the school after hours

pursuant to [its] community use policy,” the Court did not

limit its analysis to whether endorsement would be perceived

by children, but also considered the perception of the school’s

activities among the adult members of the community. Id. at

118. In short, Good News looked to the entire audience, not

just to the children voluntarily in it. 

Here, young Roe’s state-employed teachers conduct the

state-directed daily recitation of the Pledge in a public school

classroom during school hours. Five-year-olds are not the

“youngest members of the audience,” they are the entire audience; “the public writ large” does not attend kindergarten

classes. In fact, as the Supreme Court pointed out in Good

News, “in the normal classroom setting” the children are “all

the same age.” 533 U.S. at 118. In an as-applied challenge

like the one before us, a practice must be analyzed in terms

of those who actually experience its effects. As the majority

is well aware, we are here examining only the effects of the

daily classroom recitation of the religious version of the

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Pledge on public schoolchildren and are not considering the

constitutionality of the use of that version of the Pledge in

other circumstances. Indeed, because it is alleged that the recitation of the Pledge in the classroom is designed to indoctrinate schoolchildren with a religious belief, see supra Part

II.C, it would make no sense to analyze its constitutionality in

terms of its hypothetical effect on adults. 

It is, in fact, the children’s lackof understanding of the full

meaning of the Pledge that renders it such a powerful tool of

indoctrination. A study conducted twenty years after the

Pledge was amended to include the words “under God” found

that “grade school children make sense of the Pledge of Allegiance by focusing on a word they understand, most commonly ‘God,’ which leads them to such conclusions as ‘The

most important part is . . . talking about God,’ or ‘We better

be good cause God is watching us even if He is invisible.’ ”

83

This result is precisely what the members of Congress who

amended the Pledge intended when they confidently stated

that “each time the[ children] pledge allegiance to Old Glory,

[they will] reassert their belief . . . in the all-present, allknowing, all-seeing, all-powerful Creator.” 100 Cong. Rec.

5915. It is also precisely what the Establishment Clause seeks

to prohibit. For under our Constitution, the indoctrination of

religious beliefs, including belief in God, is “committed to the

private sphere,” Lee, 505 U.S. at 589 — i.e., to family and the

Church (read, Synagogue, Mosque, Temple, et al.). Under no

circumstances is that function to be commandeered by the

State. 

It was over a half-century ago that Justice Jackson wrote

the words that transformed the relationship of the state to the

83Emily Buss, Allocating Developmental Control Among Parent, Child

and the State, 2004 U. CHI. LEGAL F. 27, 52 n.66 (omission in original)

(emphasis added) (quoting Eugene H. Freund & Donna Givner, Schooling,

The Pledge Phenomenon, and Social Control 12 (Am. Educ. Research

Assoc. Working Paper, 1975)). 

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individual, words that have ever since marked our First

Amendment jurisprudence: “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,

[or] religion . . . .” W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319

U.S. 624, 642 (1943). Unfortunately, today the majority is

clearly charting its course by a far different constellation with

a far less enduring First Amendment. 

C. The Coercion Test and the “Under God” Amendment

Because the state-directed, teacher-led daily recitation of

the “under God” version of the Pledge “violate[s] both the

Lemon test and the Endorsement test, we are not required to

determine that [it] also run[s] afoul of the Coercion Test to

hold [it] antithetical to the Establishment Clause.” Doe v.

Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist., 168 F.3d 806, 818 (5th Cir. 1999),

aff’d 530 U.S. 290 (2000) (applying Establishment Clause

tests independently). The coercion test, set forth in Lee v.

Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992), did not replace the Lemon

analysis or the endorsement test. See id. at 587 (“[W]e do not

accept the invitation . . . to reconsider our decision in Lemon

v. Kurtzman.”); id. at 604 (Blackmun, J., concurring)

(“[N]othing in [Lee is] inconsistent with the essential precepts

of the Establishment Clause developed in our precedents.”).

Rather, Lee created a third test with a separate threshold that

a statute or practice must also meet in order to comply with

the Establishment Clause: “[A]t a minimum, the Constitution

guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support

or participate in religion or its exercise. . . .” Id. at 587 (majority opinion) (emphasis added). Accordingly, if a statute or

practice fails to pass the coercion test, that is reason enough

to hold it unconstitutional. See id. at 604 (Blackmun, J., concurring) (“Although our precedents make clear that proof of

government coercion is not necessary to prove an Establishment Clause violation, it is sufficient.”). 

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1.

The Supreme Court has been especially sensitive to the use

of coercion in cases involving “young impressionable children” in public school. Sch. Dist. of Abington Twp. v.

Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 307 (Goldberg, J., concurring). As it

stated in Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578, 585 (1987),

when evaluating state-sponsored religious activity in the

classroom we “must [be] mindful of the particular concerns

that arise in the context of public elementary and secondary

schools.” The Supreme Court has never lost sight of the special danger presented by the promotion of religious views by

public school teachers: In over six decades of adjudicating

Establishment Clause challenges, the Supreme Court has

never once upheld a statute or practice that promotes religion

or religious beliefs in public schools or that coerces students

to express or adopt any religious views.84

In Lee, the Supreme Court emphasized the “heightened

concerns with protecting freedom of conscience from subtle

coercive pressure in the elementary and secondary public

schools.” 505 U.S. at 592. The coercive pressure inherent in

the school setting played a central role in the Court’s analysis:

Our decisions in [Engel and Abington] recognize,

among other things, that prayer exercises in public

84The Court has, in a separate line of cases, sometimes upheld various

institutional or financial relationships between public schools and religious

institutions. See, e.g., Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002)

(tuition aid). But in every single case involving advancement of religious

expression or religious beliefs in public schools, the Court has found the

challenged practice to violate the Constitution. See Santa Fe, 530 U.S. 290

(prayer at football game); Lee, 505 U.S. 577 (graduation prayer);

Edwards, 482 U.S. 578 (mandatory equal time for teaching creationism);

Wallace, 472 U.S. 38 (moment of silence for voluntary prayer); Stone, 449

U.S. 39 (posting ten commandments in classroom); Epperson, 393 U.S. 97

(1968) (prohibition on teaching evolution); Abington, 374 U.S. 203 (bible

reading); Engel, 370 U.S. 421 (school prayer). 

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schools carry a particular risk of indirect coercion.

The concern may not be limited to the context of

schools, but it is most pronounced there. . . . What

to most believers may seem nothing more than a reasonable request that the nonbeliever respect their

religious practices, in a school context may appear to

the nonbeliever or dissenter to be an attempt to

employ the machinery of the State to enforce a religious orthodoxy.

Id. (emphasis added; citations omitted). Because of that inherent pressure, the Court’s solicitude for the injury experienced

by “the dissenter of high school age” was not lessened by the

fact that it occurred at a graduation ceremony for which attendance was ostensibly voluntary. Id. at 593-94. 

Here, the plaintiff on appeal is a five-year-old child compelled by law to attend school. Every day her teacher, a state

employee, leads her and her classmates in a state-directed

exercise explicitly designed to inculcate a religious belief in

each of them — a belief in God. Such deliberate indoctrination exploits the fact “that children mimic the behavior they

observe[,] or at least the behavior that is presented to them as

normal and appropriate,” FCC v. Fox Television Stations,

Inc., 129 S. Ct. 1800, 1813 (2009), and “that children are disinclined at this age to step out of line or to flout ‘peer group

norms,’ ” Abington, 374 U.S. at 290 (Brennan, J., concurring).

As the Supreme Court has repeatedly explained, the very

nature of coercive activity is that it exerts enormous “pressure

upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion” and its practices, even though they

reject that officially endorsed religious belief. Engel, 370 U.S.

at 431 (emphasis added). 

A child subjected to state-sponsored, teacher-led religious

indoctrination has two choices: participation or refusal. The

fact that a young, impressionable schoolchild recites the religious Pledge does not necessarily mean that he does so “willNEWDOW v. RIO LINDA USD 4031

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ingly.” Contra maj. op. at 3874. To the contrary, rather than

label himself an oddball, a troublemaker, and an outcast,

rather than subject himself to humiliating name calling,

harassment and derision, he may simply prefer to conform,

formally pledging his adherence to a religious belief that is

antithetical to his true philosophical views. For these children

who conform unwillingly, coercion has had its effect: They

have chosen to forego their constitutional rights rather than to

face the consequences of not doing so. But the coercive effect

is no less severe for those students who adhere to their principles and refuse to affirm a state-held religious belief that is

contrary to their own. Those students, including Jan Roe’s

daughter, must either remain silent or leave the classroom,

neither of which options avoids the injury they suffer or cures

the constitutional violation to which they have been subjected.

See Abington, 374 U.S. at 224-25. Rather, children who

choose either of these options are separated from their classmates either literally or by the silence they maintain, and, as

a result, every day are in fact “ ‘outsiders, not full members

of the . . . community.’ ” Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 309 (quoting

Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 688 (1984) (O’Connor, J.,

concurring)). 

The majority takes inconsistent positions regarding the

coercive effect of religious indoctrination in public school

classrooms. First, it asserts that allowing children the option

of “participating in . . . religious exercises” in public schools

demonstrates “one of the great principles of our nation.” Maj.

op. at 3919. Later, however, it acknowledges that providing

such an “option” does not render the state’s conducting of a

religious practice constitutional, because the coercive pressure

still remains. Id. at 3923. Under binding Supreme Court law,

the latter position is unquestionably correct. The Free Exercise Clause “has never meant that a majority could use the

machinery of the State to practice its beliefs.” Abington, 374

U.S. at 226. If it attempts to do so, “the fact that individual

students may absent themselves [or remain silent] . . . furnishes no defense to a claim of unconstitutionality under the

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Establishment Clause.” Id. at 224-25 (emphasis added). As

the Court expressly stated in Lee, the government may not

“place objectors in the dilemma of participating, with all that

implies, or protesting. . . . . To recognize that the choice

imposed by the State constitutes an unacceptable constraint

only acknowledges that the government may no more use

social pressure to enforce orthodoxy than it may use more

direct means.” Lee, 505 U.S. at 593-94.

The intense social and psychological pressure at issue,

pressure that is enormous when brought to bear against a fiveyear-old child, leaves no doubt that a public school classroom

is a coercive environment, as defined in Lee. Indeed, the

majority ultimately concedes that every day that young Roe

goes to school she is “coerced to participate” in the statedirected, teacher-led recitation of the “under God” version of

the Pledge of Allegiance. Maj. op. at 3923. And so it must,

as all nine of the Justices in Lee agreed that impermissible

coercion occurs in a public-school classroom where attendance is mandatory, if that classroom is used to promote religious beliefs or expression.85

2.

Given that the majority inevitably concedes, as it must, that

the classroom environment at issue in this case exerts significant coercive pressure to conform on children such as young

Roe, and that allowing her the option of remaining silent or

leaving the room would not cure the constitutional violation,

85The Lee majority ruled that a high school graduation ceremony was

a coercive environment because there was “public pressure, as well as peer

pressure, [to] attend[ ]” even though attendance was not strictly mandatory. Lee, 505 U.S. at 593; see also Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at 310-12 (holding

the same for football games). The four dissenting justices would not apply

the coercion analysis to such a “voluntary” setting as a high school graduation ceremony, but even they agreed that a public classroom where attendance is mandatory is an inherently coercive environment. Lee, 505 U.S.

at 642-43 (Scalia, J., dissenting). 

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it is left with only two equally unpersuasive arguments as to

why the daily recitation of the “under God” version of the

Pledge does not violate the coercion rule. First, the majority

contends that the Pledge is not a “religious exercise.” Accord

Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at 31 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in the

judgment). Second, the majority argues that the recitation of

the Pledge is a “patriotic activity.” Maj. op. at 3926-27

(emphasis added).

The majority’s analysis can in fact be boiled down to one

sentence: “the Pledge is not a prayer.” Maj. op. at 3923. To

meet the coercion standard, my colleagues first conclude that

“Lee’s indirect coercion analysis” applies “only if the government coerces students to engage in a religious exercise.” Id.

at 3926 (emphasis added). This may be the majority’s determination in this case, but it most certainly is not the holding

of the Supreme Court in Lee. 

To the contrary, in Lee the Court held that “[i]t is beyond

dispute that, at a minimum, the Constitution guarantees that

government may not coerce anyone to support or participate

in religion or its exercise . . . .” Lee, 505 U.S. at 587 (emphasis added). Apparently the same convenient willful blindness

that prevents the majority from reading the Pledge’s legislative history prevents it from reading the word “or” in the preceding sentence. Otherwise, it would surely be forced to

concede that Lee’s coercion analysis applies when the government coerces someone “to support or participate in religion,”

and not just “to [participate in] religious exercises.” If the Lee

majority’s word is not good enough for the majority in this

case, Justice Scalia’s dissent, one part of which reflected the

agreement of all members of the Court, should be sufficient.

In that part, Justice Scalia said, “I have no quarrel with the

Court’s general proposition that the Establishment Clause

‘guarantees that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion . . . .’ ” Id. at 642 (Scalia, J., dissenting) (quoting id. at 587 (majority opinion)). 

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If the unanimous conclusion reached by the Court in Lee

still does not persuade my colleagues that their holding today

is erroneous, perhaps they should simply read once again the

very cases that they contend support their overly narrow reading of Lee. The majority asserts with regard to those cases that

“all” of the activities “have been invalidated by the Supreme

Court as unconstitutional school-sponsored religious exercises.” Maj. op. at 3888 (emphasis added). But if the anticoercion rule applied only in the case of “religious exercises,” as

the majority contends, then at least two important decisions

would have to be erased from the U.S. Reports.

In Edwards v. Aguillard, which was a coercion case,86 the

Supreme Court struck down as violative of the Establishment

Clause a statute mandating “instruction in ‘creation science’ ”

in public schools. 482 U.S. at 581. A lecture in creation science, the Court held, supports religion through “the presentation of a religious viewpoint.” Id. at 596. Of course, such a

lecture contains none of the attributes of a “religious exercise”

that have been identified by the majority. It does not “invite

divine intercession,” “express personal gratitude,” or “ask forgiveness.” See maj. op. at 3889. It is “led by a teacher, not by

a clergyman or other religious leader.” See id. at 3892. Students listening to the instruction “do not kneel, nor don yarmulkes, veils, or rosaries,” see id., or make “a solemn avowal

of divine faith and supplication for the blessings of the

Almighty.” See id. at 3926 (quoting Engel, 370 U.S. at 424-

25). If there is a definition of “religious exercise” broad

enough to encompass the teaching of “scientific critiques of

86In Edwards, the Supreme Court explicitly relied on the fact that the

State, through its public school system, “exert[ed] great authority and

coercive power through mandatory attendance requirements, and because

of the students’ emulation of teachers as role models and the children’s

susceptibility to peer pressure.” Edwards, 482 U.S. at 584 (emphases

added). Indeed, the Court in Lee itself cited Edwards as an example of a

case that demonstrates the “subtle coercive pressure in the elementary and

secondary public schools.” Lee, 505 U.S. at 592 (citing Edwards, 482 U.S.

at 584). 

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prevailing scientific theories,” Edwards, 482 U.S. at 593, the

majority has not provided it.

Similarly, Stone v. Graham, 449 U.S. 39 (1980) (per

curiam), is another coercion case that did not involve a religious exercise. In that case, the Court struck down a statute

that “require[d] the posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments . . . on the wall of each public classroom in the State.”

Id. at 39. Surely, merely sitting in a room that has a copy of

the Ten Commandments hanging on the wall does not constitute a “religious exercise.” See maj. op. at 3889 (a religious

exercise “is always active”). In fact, the Court held that by

being compelled to sit in the classroom with the Ten Commandments affixed to the wall, the students were subjected to

a “religious practice.” Stone, 449 U.S. at 42. The Court struck

down the statute because its “effect” was “to induce the

schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate

and obey, the [Ten] Commandments.” Id. (emphasis added).

Thus, there are at least two Supreme Court cases that invalidated state practices supporting religion in the public schools

as coercive, and therefore violative of the Establishment

Clause, even though those practices did not constitute a “religious exercise.” Accordingly, Lee must be understood to hold,

as it explicitly states, “that government may not coerce anyone to support or participate in religion or its exercise,” Lee,

505 U.S. at 587 (emphasis added), and not simply, as the

majority states, that the government may not coerce anyone

to engage in religious exercises.

87

87In addition to being contrary to Lee’s text and the Supreme Court’s

holdings in Edwards and Stone, the majority’s decision to limit the coercion test to religious exercises is also unworkable. It is highly significant

that nowhere in the majority’s opinion does it provide a definition of a

religious exercise, despite its acknowledgment that “oftentimes what one

person considers secular, another considers religious.” Maj. op. at 3919.

By basing its holding on this undefined yet in its view determinative concept, the majority forces courts to decide on a case-by-case basis what is

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What might the Supreme Court have had in mind when it

described government action that coerces someone “to support or participate in religion”? Here, too, Lee provides the

answer: “The First Amendment’s Religion Clauses mean that

religious beliefs and religious expression are too precious to

be either proscribed or prescribed by the State.” Id. at 589

(emphasis added). The notion that the State cannot coerce

religious belief or expression is as old as the Court’s first

Establishment Clause case, see Everson v. Bd. of Educ. of

Ewing, 330 U.S. 1, 15 (1947) (“The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government . . . . can force nor

influence a person . . . to profess a belief or disbelief in any

religion.” (emphasis added)), and as current as its most recent

decision, see McCreary County v. ACLU of Ky., 545 U.S.

844, 881 (2005) (“This is no time to deny the prudence of

understanding the Establishment Clause to require the government to stay neutral on religious belief, which is reserved for

the conscience of the individual.” (emphasis added)), with an

unbroken line of cases in between. In fact the very first case

to strike down religious practices in public schools said,

“When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect

coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the

prevailing officially approved religion is plain.” Engel, 370

U.S. at 431 (emphases added). 

and is not a religious exercise. In so doing, the majority recreates “the

abhorred licensing system [that] . . . the First Amendment was intended

to ban from this country” — a system in which judges must trade the black

robes of neutrality for the ecclesiastical vestments of religious arbiters. Cf.

First Nat’l Bank v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 801 (1978) (Burger, C.J., concurring). Today’s majority thus creates an entirely new constitutional

dilemma as, under its rule, federal courts will necessarily “risk greater

‘entanglement’ ” with religion “by attempting to enforce” the modified

coercion test crafted today, a test that depends on what is or is not a religious exercise. Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 272 n.11 (1981). 

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As the Supreme Court has made clear, the Pledge requires

an affirmation of a belief. See W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v.

Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 633 (1943) (“[The] pledge requires

affirmation of a belief and an attitude of mind.”). Until its

amendment in 1954, the Pledge was solely an affirmation of

belief in, and loyalty to, one’s country. But the “under God”

amendment added another component. Under the 1954

amendment, there is no conceivable way that the plain text, let

alone the history, of the Pledge as amended can be read in any

way other than as an affirmation of what the author of the

amendment referred to as “the definitive factor in the American way of life[:] . . . belief in God.” 100 Cong. Rec. 1700

(emphasis added). One simply cannot in good faith daily

affirm loyalty to a nation “under God” if one does not believe

that God exists, questions whether there is a God, or believes

in polytheism. 

No one can deny that the Pledge requires the speaker to

engage in a performative act that binds him to a particular

belief — a belief in a nation “under God.”

88 Indeed, even the

majority appears to concede that one cannot recite the

amended Pledge without “affirming a belief in God.” Maj. op.

at 3923. A student reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to “one

nation, under God” personally adopts that language, which

expresses an undeniable and unavoidable religious tenet: God

exists, and he is watching over our country. The conception

of “God” espoused in that statement is inconsistent even with

88See BLACK’S LAW DICTIONARY 119 (8th ed. 2004) (“pledge, n. 1. A formal promise or undertaking.”); WEBSTER’S THIRD NEW INTERNATIONAL

DICTIONARY, UNABRIDGED (1996) (“pledge, vb . . . . 4a: to assure or promise

the performance of . . . b: to promise seriously: undertake”). Because of

this fundamental characteristic of an oath of allegiance, reciting the Pledge

differs from “reciting historical documents . . . [or] singing officially

espoused anthems which include the composer’s professions of faith.”

Maj. op. at 3927 (quoting Engel, 370 U.S. at 435 n.21) (emphasis added).

The simple fact that the Pledge is a pledge means that its recitation

requires a profession of one’s own belief in a nation “under God,” not an

acknowledgment of someone else’s. 

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many theistic, let alone atheistic or agnostic, religious philosophies.89 It is impossible to pledge allegiance to a “nation under

God” without professing an unmistakably “religious belief,”

Lee, 505 U.S. at 589: there is a God whom our nation is

under, or to whom our nation is subordinate. Anyone coerced

to express such a belief is, by definition, coerced to affirm a

89Although supporters of the Pledge often tout its “nonsectarian” nature,

see, e.g., Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at 42 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment), the God that the Pledge describes has clearly defined attributes that

are rejected by many of the world’s largest religions, and many millions

of religious Americans. As multiple scholars have noted, the Pledge

amendment “commits the state to a variety of religious beliefs, for example, that there is a God[, ]rather than no god or many gods.” Mark Strasser,

Establishing the Pledge: On Coercion, Endorsement, and the Marsh Wild

Card, 40 IND. L. REV. 529, 555 (2007). “The Pledge also affirms [that] . . .

God exercises some sort of broad superintending authority that an entire

nation can be ‘under.’ The nature of this authority is not further specified

. . . but . . . . [a] ‘Nation under God’ does not plausibly refer to . . . God

as a name or metaphor for all the goodness immanent in the universe [or

in nature].” Douglas Laycock, Theology Scholarships, The Pledge of Allegiance, and Religious Liberty: Avoiding the Extremes But Missing the Liberty, 118 HARV. L. REV. 155, 226 (2004). Millions of devoutly religious

individuals do not subscribe to these beliefs. For example, the world’s 900

million Hindus — 766,000 of whom live in the United States — and this

country’s 106,000 adherents of Native American religions might take

issue with the explicitly monotheistic nature of the Pledge. Further, the

declaration that there is a “superintending” God likely would not sit well

with the world’s 350 million Buddhists, including the one million in this

country — not to mention our two million atheists, agnostics, humanists,

and secularists and quarter million other believers in some form of spiritualism. The very fact that the religious belief now embodied in the Pledge

is antithetical to the beliefs of millions of Americans, religious and irreligious alike, is why the Constitution prohibits the government from taking

sides, and certainly from coercing schoolchildren to adopt and proclaim an

officially prescribed belief. 

Global populations are based on percentages in CIA, THE WORLD

FACTBOOK (2008), available at http://tinyurl.com/WorldFactbook-World,

and on the global population clock, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. and World

Population Clocks, http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html (last

visited Sept. 10, 2008). American populations are based on U.S. Census

Bureau, The 2007 Statistical Abstract, t. 73, (2007) http://

www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2007/population/religion.html. 

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belief in God and thus “to support . . . religion.” Id. at 587.

Thus, the majority’s attempt to limit the coercion test to a religious exercise fails.

3.

In its second attempt to avoid the strictures of Lee, the

majority argues that the prohibition against coercing schoolchildren to embrace religion does not apply to the recitation

of the amended Pledge because that recitation is simply a “patriotic exercise designed to foster national unity and pride.”

Maj. op. at 3877 (quoting Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at 6); see also

id. at 62. I do not dispute that the recitation of the Pledge both

as originally written and as amended is a patriotic exercise or

that the version codified in 1942 was indeed “designed to foster national unity and pride.”

90 But where a religious message

is inserted into a patriotic exercise, or into any other secular

exercise, in order to promote religion and, more particularly,

to inculcate in children a religious belief, the exercise as

90I note that the state-sponsored recitation struck down in Lee itself was

at least as patriotic as the Pledge of Allegiance: 

God of the Free, Hope of the Brave: 

For the Legacy of America where diversity is celebrated and

the rights of minorities are protected, we thank You. May these

young women grow up to enrich it. 

For the liberty of America, we thank You. May these new

graduates grow up to guard it. 

For the political process of America in which all its citizens

may participate, for its court system where all may seek justice

we thank You. May those we honor this morning always turn to

it in trust. 

For the destiny of America we thank You. May the graduates

of Nathan Bishop Middle School so live that they might help to

share it. 

May our aspirations for our country and for these young people, who are our hope for the future, be richly fulfilled. 

Lee, 505 U.S. at 581-82. 

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amended runs afoul of the Establishment Clause. Surely, as

noted earlier, if Congress had amended the Pledge so as to

describe the United States as “one nation under Jesus,” “one

nation under Jesus Christ,” or “one nation under the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” even the majority, one might

hope, would not contend that, because the recitation of the

Pledge was and is a patriotic exercise, no unconstitutional

coercion would result from the state-directed, teacher-led

daily recitation of the Pledge in its amended form. The analysis can be no different for the recitation of the amended version of the Pledge, with the inserted phrase “under God.”

91 In

all those instances, the Pledge would be equally patriotic. It

is irrelevant for purposes of the Establishment Clause whether

a state-directed effort to indoctrinate schoolchildren with a

belief in religion, or in this case, more specifically a belief in

God, is incorporated into a patriotic or some other secular

exercise or constitutes a stand-alone message all by itself. It

is the content of the religious message not the vehicle in

which it is contained that matters. Government is simply not

permitted to engage in the indoctrination of religious beliefs,

whatever the means by which it may choose to deliver them.

The solution is obvious: excise the offending material from

the patriotic or secular message. That is particularly easy to

do where, as here, the religious component of the message has

been separately inserted by a legislative amendment into

existing, non-offending patriotic or other secular material. 

The majority’s reading of Lee ignores the fundamental

principles underlying decades of Establishment Clause jurisprudence. In so doing, the majority deems religious indoctrination in public schools permissible under the coercion test so

91The Supreme Court has always held that atheists (and, a fortiori,

agnostics) enjoy the same First Amendment protections as everyone else.

See, e.g., Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 52-55 (1985); Epperson v.

Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 104 (1968); Sch. Dist. of Abington Twp. v.

Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 216 (1963); Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488,

495 (1961). 

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long as it is not part of a religious activity. This holding is

dangerous and far-reaching, as well as unprecedented and

unfounded. After today, if this court were to take the majority’s holding seriously, or purport to follow it in relevant cases,

public-school students in this circuit could be subjected to

regular lectures promoting Christianity as the true religion,

cf. Edwards, 482 U.S. 578 (creationism instruction), or

required to enroll in “character development” programs that

extolled the superiority of Jesus over all others as a spiritual

leader. They would no longer have a claim under Lee v. Weisman because the practices they would be challenging would

be included within otherwise lawful secular programs. Surely

this utter evisceration of the coercion test is not what the

Supreme Court intended when it vindicated Deborah Weisman’s constitutional rights. Moreover, religious minorities of

all stripes would quickly suffer under the rule the majority

propounds, were we to apply it beyond the narrow confines

of the Pledge of Allegiance. It should be apparent to all that

regardless of the majority’s heart-felt desire to justify the

coercive recitation of the amended Pledge by California’s

public schoolchildren and its willingness to ignore the controlling law in order to reach that objective, a proper application of the coercion test precludes not only religious exercises

but all other state sponsored efforts to inculcate religious

beliefs in America’s public schoolchildren, even if inserted in

the middle of a course in mathematics or incorporated in any

other secular or patriotic activity.

D. Application of the Tests to the 2002 Legislation

I have explained why the 2002 reaffirmation of the Pledge

statute is of no relevance, as it simply sets forth Congress’s

view that the 1954 amendment was constitutional and that our

interpretation of the Constitution in Newdow I was erroneous

— and thus it offers no different purpose for the adoption of

the amendment. See supra Part III. However, the foregoing

review of the Lemon, endorsement, and coercion tests demonstrates why, even had Congress advanced a secular purpose

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for both the 1954 “under God” amendment and its 2002 reaffirmation — including the secular messages that the majority

purports to believe that Congress intended to convey: that we

live under “limited government,” or more generally that we

should recognize our nation’s “historical principles of governance” — the amendment as applied in the case of the statedirected, teacher-led, daily recitation of the Pledge would still

have failed to comply with the Establishment Clause. It would

have failed the Lemon test because its principal purpose

would still have been religious, and because the “principal or

primary effect” of the amendment, the affirmation of a personal belief in God, would still have unquestionably “advance[d] . . . religion.” Lemon, 403 U.S. at 612-13 (citation

omitted) (emphasis added). It would have failed the endorsement test because such recitations would still have sent the

message to nonadherents of religion and to nonadherents of

religions that embrace monotheism “that they are outsiders,

not full members of the political community, and an accompanying message to adherents that they are insiders, favored

members of the political community.” Santa Fe, 530 U.S. at

309-10 (quoting Lynch, 465 U.S. at 688 (O’Connor, J., concurring)). Finally, it would have failed the coercion test

because such recitations would still have coerced schoolchildren “to support or participate in religion,” and to profess a

belief, whether held by them or not, in God. Lee, 505 U.S. at

587. In short, the “under God” version of the Pledge is, under

all three tests, unconstitutional as applied, not only when considered in light of Congress’s actual purpose in adopting the

amendment in 1954, but even when considered in light of the

purpose that the majority would erroneously impute to Congress in reaffirming the amendment in 2002.

V. The Inapplicability of Alternative Theories

As the foregoing analysis demonstrates, the statesponsored, teacher-led daily recitation of the “under God”

version of the Pledge in public schools is unconstitutional

under any Establishment Clause doctrine that might be

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applied. Ordinarily, one would expect an outcome required by

binding Supreme Court precedent to end the debate. However,

faced with the formidable outcry that would surely arise in

defense of the “under God” version of the Pledge were the

Constitution to be faithfully applied, judges both on this court

and others, in an effort to sustain the unsustainable, have cast

about in search of alternative theories — theories not

grounded in any Establishment Clause principles announced

by the Supreme Court. Such theories include the notions that

appellate courts must uphold the state-sponsored recitation of

the “under God” version of the Pledge on the basis of statements made in Supreme Court dicta or in individual concurring or dissenting opinions of some of the various justices, on

the ground that the religious version of the Pledge is constitutional under the putative doctrine of ceremonial deism, and

for the reason that any harm caused by its recitation in public

schools is de minimis and therefore not worthy of our attention. These alternative theories, one or two of which today’s

majority may be relying on, at least in part, and the other of

which is relied on by our colleagues on other circuits, provide

no legitimate support for holding the “under God” version of

the Pledge constitutional as applied. I will start with the least

dangerous, the nose-counting dicta and dissents theory. The

two which could cause serious harm to the First Amendment

rights of minorities, and with at least one of which the majority appears to flirt at times, I will save for last. 

A. Supreme Court Dicta

The majority proudly asserts that by its decision today we

“join our sister circuits who have held [that] similar school

policies do not violate the Establishment Clause.” Maj. op. at

3877. My colleagues properly do not, however, embrace the

reasoning relied upon by the two other circuits that have so

held. Both of those circuits predicate their conclusions on

Supreme Court dicta or the views expressed by individual

Supreme Court justices. See Myers v. Loudon County Pub.

Schs., 418 F.3d 395, 402 (4th Cir. 2005); Sherman v. Cmty.

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Consol. Sch. Dist., 980 F.2d 437, 446-48 (7th Cir. 1992).

Because that is the only basis, other than that on which

today’s majority relies, on which any circuit court has upheld

state-directed, teacher-led daily recitations of the “under God”

version of the Pledge, I explain why the majority here could

not legitimately “join our sister circuits” in their erroneous

reasoning. 

The argument set forth by the Fourth and Seventh circuits

is essentially this: The Supreme Court has authored “repeated

dicta . . . respecting the constitutionality of the Pledge,”

Myers, 418 F.3d at 402, and those dicta “proclaim[ ] that [the]

practice is consistent with the establishment clause,” Sherman, 980 F.2d at 448; appellate courts, therefore, should follow the purported rule established in the dicta because “[i]f

the Justices are just pulling our leg” we should “let them say

so.” Sherman, 980 F.2d at 448. Cleverly or not cleverly

worded as this argument may be, it fails in both its major and

minor premises: First, the so-called dicta “respecting the constitutionality of the Pledge,” Myers, 418 F.3d at 402, in fact

do not say that the Pledge is “consistent with the establishment clause,” Sherman, 980 F.2d at 448. Second, the Supreme

Court’s holdings issued after each of the dicta was written do

not support adherence to the “rule” that our colleagues on the

Fourth and Seventh Circuit have read into preexisting dicta.

It is those subsequent holdings that must control the reasoning

and decisions of the courts of appeals. 

The assertion that the Supreme Court has “proclaim[ed]

that [the Pledge] is consistent with the establishment clause,”

id. (emphasis added), is inconsistent with the language of the

purported dicta on which that assertion is based. Proponents

of the dicta argument assert that “[t]he Supreme Court has

spoken repeatedly on the precise issue we address today.”

Myers, 418 F.3d at 409 (Motz, J., concurring in the judgment); id. at 402 (majority opinion) (relying on “repeated

dicta from the Court”). However, in over six decades of

Establishment Clause jurisprudence, the Supreme Court has in

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fact made only two statements regarding the Pledge of Allegiance in its opinions.92 The first of these appeared in Lynch

v. Donelly, a case decided in 1984. In that case, the Court simply notes, in a preliminary discussion, that the “under God”

language in the Pledge is one among many “examples of reference to our religious heritage” that is reflected in numerous

well-established national customs and practices. Lynch v.

Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668, 676 (1984). Contrary to what the

Fourth and Seventh Circuits assert, the statement in Lynch in

no way expresses the view that the Pledge passes any of the

three Establishment Clause tests or that the practice of daily,

state-directed, teacher-led recitation of the amended Pledge by

public schoolchildren is constitutional. The sole mention of

the Pledge amounts to no more than a single prefatory historical reference, after which it is not discussed again.93

Moreover, as the author of that historical reference wrote

soon thereafter, in his view intervening Supreme Court law —

specifically, the Supreme Court’s decision in Wallace v. Jaffree — rendered the version of the Pledge that includes the

92Obviously, in addition to the two cases to which I refer — Lynch v.

Donelly and County of Allegheny v. ACLU — the Supreme Court mentioned the Pledge of Allegiance in Elk Grove v. Newdow, a case closely

related to the one presently before us. However, the Court in that case, in

the words of its Chief Justice, “avoid[ed] reaching the merits of the constitutional claim.” Elk Grove Unified Sch. Dist. v. Newdow, 542 U.S. 1, 18

(2004) (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in the judgment). Elk Grove therefore

sheds little light on the issue before us. That case certainly does not contain any statements, in dicta or otherwise, suggesting that the statedirected, teacher-led daily recitation of the religious version of the Pledge

of Allegiance in public schools passes constitutional muster. That is the

precise question the Court left unanswered. 

93Lynch also includes a dissent from Justice Brennan who did not

declare that the Pledge was constitutional but said that, although he was

inclined toward that view, he was “uncertain” about the question. Lynch,

465 U.S. at 716. He based his ruminations on the theory of “ceremonial

deism,” a doctrine that has never been adopted by the Supreme Court and

that would not be an appropriate basis for the majority’s holding today.

See infra Part V.B. 

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phrase “under God” unconstitutional. Dissenting from the

Court’s holding in Wallace, a case that ought to govern the

majority’s analysis today, Chief Justice Burger wrote just one

year after authoring the opinion in Lynch: 

Congress amended the statutory Pledge of Allegiance 31 years ago to add the words ‘under God.’

Do the several opinions in support of the judgment

today render the Pledge unconstitutional? That

would be the consequence of their method of focusing on the difference between [the challenged statute] and its predecessor statute . . . . 

Wallace, 472 U.S. at 88 (Burger, C.J., dissenting) (citation

omitted); see also id. at n.3. Thus Wallace rendered any

thought that the Chief Justice might have harbored that the

amended Pledge was constitutional no longer valid. A dictum,

let alone a mere reference, recognized by its own author as

having no further validity cannot bind us at all and certainly

could not do so in the face of subsequent holdings that strip

the reference of any force or effect. Such subsequent opinions

include not only Wallace but also Edwards v. Aguillard, Lee

v. Weisman, and Santa Fe v. Doe, each of which made substantial contributions to Establishment Clause jurisprudence,

and each of which contained holdings that conflict with the

tenets underlying Chief Justice Burger’s “dictum” in Lynch.

The second purported dictum “proclaiming” the Pledge’s

constitutionality is the following statement from County of

Allegheny v. ACLU: 

Our previous opinions have considered in dicta the

motto and the pledge, characterizing them as consistent with the proposition that government may not

communicate an endorsement of religious belief.

Lynch, 465 U.S., at 693 (O’Connor, J., concurring);

id., at 716-717 (Brennan, J., dissenting). We need

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ous distinction between creche displays and references to God in the motto and the pledge. 

492 U.S. 573, 602-03 (1989) (emphasis added). This passage

is a far cry from an assertion by the Supreme Court, in dicta

or otherwise, that the Pledge “is consistent with the establishment clause.” Sherman, 980 F.2d at 448. To the contrary,

despite the Court’s unusual characterization of statements in

a prior concurrence and dissent as “[o]ur previous opinions,”

the Supreme Court in Allegheny simply reported the fact that

a concurrence and a dissent in Lynch state in dicta that the

amended Pledge is constitutional. However, neither that concurrence nor dissent spoke for the Court, and those are the

only two opinions Allegheny cites when it refers to “[o]ur previous opinions” characterizing the Pledge, in dicta, as constitutional. The Court in Allegheny itself expressly declined to

comment on the validity of those prior “dicta” or on the

Pledge’s constitutionality, recognizing that the issue was irrelevant to the case before it. Id. Furthermore, like the “dictum”

in Lynch, the statement in Allegheny was written in 1989, predating Edwards v. Aguillard, Lee v. Weisman, and Santa Fe

v. Doe, core holdings that govern our analysis today. Finally,

neither the “dictum” in Allegheny nor the “dictum” in Lynch

expressed a view on the merits of the constitutional question

before us. A plain reading of the “dicta” and of subsequent

Supreme Court decisions makes it apparent that the dicta

argument relied upon by the Fourth and Seventh Circuits provides a very slim reed indeed — in fact, no reed at all. 

There is also no merit to the minor premise asserted by the

Fourth and Seventh Circuits that appellate courts should treat

dicta as controlling. As all courts and judges have recognized,

Supreme Court dicta, like all others, are not binding, and they

certainly cannot serve as a justification for ignoring supervening Supreme Court precedent. Dicta or not, an intermediate

court of appeals is required to follow binding Supreme Court

cases unless and until the Supreme Court overrules them.

Moreover, the only reason Supreme Court dicta enjoy greater

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weight than the dicta of lower courts is that they are a “prophecy of what the Court might hold.” United States v. MonteroCamargo, 208 F.3d 1122, 1132 n.17 (9th Cir. 2000) (internal

quotations omitted). Prophecies may be of some value when

there are no binding precedents that govern the outcome; they

are of no relevance, however, when relying on them would

require an intermediate appellate court to ignore Supreme

Court law that is handed down after those prophecies, that is

contrary to them and that controls the decision. If the value of

a Supreme Court dictum lies in its forecasting ability, then

surely when “what the Court might hold” turns out to be the

opposite of what the Court later does hold the dictum must

lose whatever authority it might once have had. 

Perhaps aware that the author of one of the two “dicta”

acknowledged that his view had been rejected in a subsequent

opinion of the Court, that the other “dictum,” like the first,

does not actually speak to the merits of the issue in this case,

and that the two dicta together do not carry any weight in light

of the various intervening developments in the law, proponents of the dicta argument must rely on other data to bolster

their claim that the Supreme Court has implicitly instructed

lower courts how to decide the issue presently before us. The

Fourth Circuit, in search of such additional data, based its validation of the “under God” version of the Pledge not just on

the overruled purported dicta in Lynch and Allegheny, but also

on the views of “individual Justices” whom it characterizes as

“hav[ing] made clear that the Establishment Clause . . . does

not . . . make unconstitutional the daily recitation of the

Pledge in public school.” Myers, 418 F.3d at 405 (emphasis

added). The Fourth Circuit goes on to cite a string of individual concurrences and dissents from various justices before

emphatically declaring “not one Justice has ever suggested

that the Pledge is unconstitutional.” Id. at 406 (emphasis in

original). 

Although some might consider a nose count of every justice ever to have sat on the Supreme Court, past or present,

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alive or dead, an absurd method of deciding a constitutional

question concerning fundamental rights — or any other question for that matter — I need not comment on the propriety

of the Fourth Circuit’s approach because it fails on its own

terms.94 Only the judicial equivalent of Enron accounting

could yield a conclusion that “not one justice” has ever stated

that the Pledge is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court

precedents that we, as intermediate court judges, are bound to

follow. In fact, quite the opposite: the only current Justice to

have ever directly addressed the merits of the issue before us

concluded that 

94I will, however, note at least one problem with that methodology:

When justices write for themselves, as opposed to the Court, they are free

at any point to change their minds, abandoning positions they once held

without first obtaining the agreement of four of their colleagues. As a

result, the fact that a justice holds a certain view on a question not presently before him is far from conclusive evidence as to how that same justice would rule when actually faced with the relevant issue and furnished

with briefs and oral argument by all of the interested parties. For example,

the Fourth Circuit relies in part on the fact that Justice Brennan, “among

the most stalwart of separationists” of Church and State, Sherman, 980

F.2d at 447, stated in Lynch that “the references to God contained in the

Pledge of Allegiance can best be understood . . . as a form of ‘ceremonial

deism,’ protected from Establishment Clause scrutiny.” See Myers, 418

F.3d at 405 (citing Lynch, 465 U.S. at 716 (Brennan, J., dissenting)). 

Putting aside for a moment that Justice Brennan explicitly said in that

same opinion that he was “uncertain” about the Pledge’s constitutionality,

Lynch, 465 U.S. at 716 (Brennan, J., dissenting), it is worth noting that he

also opined at one point that “[t]he saying of invocational prayers in legislative chambers, state or federal, and the appointment of legislative chaplains, might well represent no involvements of the kind prohibited by the

Establishment Clause,” Abington, 374 U.S. at 299-300, yet twenty years

later, when actually presented with that issue, authored a strenuous dissent

from the majority’s decision holding legislative prayers constitutional,

directly acknowledging that he “was wrong” in Abington. See Marsh v.

Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 796 (1983) (Brennan, J., dissenting). Thus, when

lower courts base constitutional analyses on nose counts of individual Justices, not even our dicta-enhanced powers of “prophecy” may be sufficient

in divining the appropriate count. 

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[a]dherence to Lee would require [a court] to strike

down the Pledge policy, which, in most respects,

poses more serious difficulties than the prayer at

issue in Lee. A prayer at graduation is a one-time

event, the graduating students are almost (if not

already) adults, and their parents are usually present.

By contrast, very young students, removed from the

protection of their parents, are exposed to the Pledge

each and every day.

. . . .

. . . . Whether or not we classify affirming the

existence of God as a “formal religious exercise”

akin to prayer, it must present the same or similar

constitutional problems.

Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at 46, 48 (Thomas, J., concurring in the

judgment). Justice Thomas unequivocally rejected the holding

issued by today’s majority that Lee turns entirely on whether

a challenged practice constitutes a “formal religious exercise.”

Cf. supra Part IV.C. Lest there be any confusion, Justice

Thomas made his point crystal clear: “[A]s a matter of our

precedent, the Pledge policy is unconstitutional.” Elk Grove,

542 U.S. at 49. 

Six other Justices have reached the same conclusion, four

of them in opinions written after the two “dicta” in Lynch and

Allegheny upon which the Fourth and Seventh Circuits so

heavily rely. In Lee, Justice Scalia, joined by three of his colleagues, declared: “[S]ince the Pledge of Allegiance has been

revised since Barnette to include the phrase ‘under God,’

recital of the Pledge would appear to raise the same Establishment Clause issue as the invocation and benediction [invalidated today] . . . . Logically, that ought to be the next project

for the Court’s bulldozer.” See Lee, 505 U.S. at 639 (Scalia,

J., dissenting, joined by Rehnquist, C.J., and White and

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Thomas, JJ.). Similarly, in Allegheny, Justice Kennedy, writing for himself and three other Justices, wrote: 

[B]y statute, the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag

describes the United States as “one Nation under

God.” To be sure, no one is obligated to recite this

phrase, but it borders on sophistry to suggest that the

“reasonable” atheist would not feel less than a “full

member of the political community” every time his

fellow Americans recited . . . a phrase he believed to

be false.

492 U.S. at 672 (Kennedy, J., dissenting, joined by Burger,

C.J., and White and Scalia, JJ.) (internal citations omitted);

see also Wallace, 472 U.S. at 88 (Burger, C.J., dissenting);95

Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421, 450 & n.9 (1962) (Stewart, J.,

dissenting).96 For those keeping score, an accurate nose count

would thus contain more justices asserting that the Pledge is

unconstitutional under existing Supreme Court precedents

than justices expressing the contrary view.97 Were these jus95Quoted supra p. 4045. 

96“In 1954 Congress added a phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance to the

Flag so that it now contains the words ‘one Nation under God . . . .’ I am

at a loss to understand the Court’s ipse dixit that th[is] official expression[ ] of religious faith in and reliance upon a Supreme Being ‘bear[s] no

true resemblance to the unquestioned religious exercise [of] the State of

New York [invalidated] in this [case].’ ” 

97As indicated in the text, at least seven justices have concluded that the

Pledge is unconstitutional under governing Supreme Court precedent.

Only six have expressed the contrary view. Four of those justices did so

in a single dissent authored by Justice Brennan. See Lynch v. Donelly, 465

U.S. at 694 (Brennan, J., dissenting, joined by Marshall, Blackmun, and

Stevens, JJ.). As I have already discussed, see supra note 93, that dissent

explicitly expressed its “uncertainty” as to the Pledge’s constitutionality,

but opined that the words “under God” might be upheld on the basis of

“ceremonial deism,” a doctrine never embraced by a majority of the

Supreme Court. See infra Part V.B. Moreover, Justice Brennan’s statement was written in 1984, well before the Establishment Clause’s jurisprudential landscape was altered by Wallace v. Jaffree as well as Edwards v.

Aguillard, Lee v. Weisman, and Santa Fe v. Doe.

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tices to apply currently binding Supreme Court law, they

would, without doubt, hold, unlike the majority today or the

other two circuits to have decided the issue, that statesponsored, teacher-led recitation of the “under God” version

of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools does not pass

constitutional muster. 

How, then, does the Fourth Circuit conclude that “not one

Justice has ever suggested that the Pledge is unconstitutional”? Myers, 418 F.3d at 405 (emphasis in original). The

answer to this question is quite revealing: The court construes

the votes of Justice Thomas and the other justices cited above

as “pro-Pledge” votes because those justices disagree

The other two justices who expressed the view that the post-1954 version of the Pledge is consistent with governing Establishment Clause precedents were Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice O’Connor. See Elk

Grove, 542 U.S. at 25-33 (Rehnquist, C.J., concurring in the judgment);

id. at 33-45 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment). However, these

opinions were based on blatantly incomplete and erroneous information on

a critical issue. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote, “The [Pledge] amendment’s sponsor, Representative Rabaut, said its purpose was to contrast

this country’s belief in God with the Soviet Union’s embrace of atheism.

100 Cong. Rec. 1700 (1954). We do not know what other Members of

Congress thought about the purpose of the amendment.” Id. at 25-26

(emphasis added). Remarkably the late Chief Justice appears to have been

aware of only the single page of the Congressional Record that he cites in

his opinion, and indeed appears to have read even that page very selectively. Had he been aware of the remainder of the remarks made by congressmen and of the reports in the Congressional Record, he would have

known of the history detailed earlier in this opinion, and would certainly

have had to wrestle with that history in his reasoning. Perhaps he, like

today’s majority, would have found some way to reach the desired outcome nonetheless, but surely an individual opinion that demonstrates so

sweeping an unawareness of the historical record cannot be given significant weight. Justice O’Connor’s opinion is similarly flawed because it

mistakenly relied on Chief Justice Rehnquist’s uninformed historical

account. See id. at 33 (O’Connor, J., concurring in the judgment) (“[T]he

history presented by the Chief Justice illuminates the constitutional problems this case presents . . . .”). 

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with existing Supreme Court precedents, which some of them

have stated they would overturn. In other words, these justices

believe that intermediate appellate courts are required to hold

the Pledge unconstitutional, regardless of whether they would

exercise their own prerogative as Supreme Court justices to

overrule the precedents that bind us today. Their opinions

may not, of course, be counted in favor of the holding reached

by the Fourth and Seventh Circuits. 

Although my colleagues have not made the error made by

“our sister circuits” that they are proud to join, they could not

have reached the result they do without disregarding clearly

binding Supreme Court law, as recognized by a number of

Supreme Court justices, past and present. Disregarding that

binding Supreme Court law is not within the authority of circuit court judges. Accordingly, my colleagues seriously err in

reaching the result they do in this case. 

B. Ceremonial Deism

It is unclear whether by its vague, disjointed, and indirect

allusions to “ceremonial deism” the majority intended to rely

on that theory. Ceremonial deism is itself a hazily defined,

never formally adopted doctrine under which it may be

asserted that phrases that would otherwise constitute unconstitutional establishment of religion have, with respect to the

particular usage at issue, become so interwoven into America’s social fabric that they no longer convey a religious message of sufficient potency to offend the Constitution. The

majority implicitly invokes this “doctrine” when it cites

Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783 (1983), for the proposition

that “the nation’s historical practices can outweigh even obvious religious concerns under the Establishment Clause.”

98

98As one of the members of the majority had once recognized, this principle has limited applicability, especially for a state practice with a history

as brief as that of the recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge

in public schools: 

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Maj. op. at 3916. It also appears to endorse or at least approve

Justice Brennan’s dissent in Lynch v. Donelly, which explicitly relied upon ceremonial deism, id. at 22 n.11, although

Justice Brennan himself expressed some uncertainty about his

position.99

Whatever the merits of the majority’s “ceremonial references to God” approach in other contexts, Supreme Court precedent precludes us from applying to this case the doctrine

discussed by Justices Brennan and O’Connor and implicitly

followed by the Court in Marsh: that in certain circumstances

a practice with a sufficient historical acceptance is less susceptible to, or more immune from, challenge on Establishment Clause grounds. Marsh approved the time-honored

opening of a legislative session with a chaplain’s prayer. A

teacher-led daily recitation of the religious version of the

Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is, however, far different from the opening ceremony of a legislative session, and

so the Court made clear in Lee. Lee explained that

[i]nherent differences between the public school system and a session of a state legislature distinguish

this case from Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783

(1983). . . . The atmosphere at the opening of a sesCounty of Allegheny points out that not ‘all accepted practices

200 years old and their equivalents are constitutional today.’ . . . .

If 200 years does not necessarily suffice to sanitize an otherwise

violative establishment of religion, then the fact alone that [a]

practice has occurred for 50 years is similarly of little value. 

Cammack v. Waihee, 932 F.2d 765, 786 (9th Cir. 1991) (D. Nelson, J., dissenting) (quoting County of Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 605). 

99As indicated in a portion of Justice Brennan’s dissent, the decision in

Marsh v. Chambers is the closest the Supreme Court has ever come to

adopting the rationale underlying ceremonial deism. In that case, the

Court, without explicitly using the phrase “ceremonial deism,” upheld the

practice of opening legislative sessions with a formal prayer on the ground

that the practice had a long and uninterrupted history in this country. 

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sion of a state legislature where adults are free to

enter and leave with little comment and for any number of reasons cannot compare with the constraining

potential of the . . . school [environment, where] student[s must] attend. The influence and force of a formal exercise in a school . . . are far greater than the

prayer exercise we condoned in Marsh. The Marsh

majority in fact gave specific recognition to this distinction and placed particular reliance on it in

upholding the prayers at issue there. 463 U.S. at 792.

Today’s case is different. [In school], teachers and

principals must and do retain a high degree of control over the precise contents of the program, . . . the

movements, the dress, and the decorum of the students. . . . Our Establishment Clause jurisprudence

remains a delicate and fact-sensitive one, and we

cannot accept the parallel relied upon by petitioners

and the United States between the facts of Marsh

and the case now before us. Our decisions in Engel

v. Vitale and School Dist. of Abington v. Schempp

require us to distinguish the public school context.

505 U.S. at 596-97 (internal citations omitted). Thus, Lee precludes the use of ceremonial deism to justify state-sponsored

religious activity in public school classrooms, including

teacher-led daily recitations of the “under God” version of the

Pledge of Allegiance. 

There are two other reasons that the application of ceremonial deism to the amended version of the Pledge is not consistent with the principles underlying that so-called legal

doctrine. First, historically speaking, the contention asserted

by Justice O’Connor that the Pledge has settled into a secular

social niche because it is a “practice [that] has been employed

pervasively without engendering significant controversy” is

simply inaccurate. Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at 38 (O’Connor, J.,

concurring in the judgment); cf. Allegheny, 492 U.S. at 631

(O’Connor, J., concurring). When the bill amending the

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Pledge was first introduced in 1954, thirty-five million Americans opposed the addition of the words “under God” to the

traditional oath.100 Today, that number is even larger: When

this court issued its opinion in 2002 striking down the daily,

teacher-led recitation of the “under God” version of the

Pledge as unconstitutional, over thirty-nine million Americans

agreed with our decision.101 Moreover, in the five and a half

decades since the Pledge was amended to convey an explicitly

religious purpose, numerous legal challenges have been filed

seeking to remedy the purported constitutional harm suffered

by millions of Americans who do not subscribe to a belief in

God as prescribed by the “under God” version of the Pledge.

Indeed, these challenges began shortly after the Pledge was

amended and have been pursued consistently throughout the

intervening decades.102 The fact that judges or justices may be

willing to ignore the “significant controversy” the Pledge has

engendered does not mean that the controversy does not exist

or has not continued uninterruptedly over time.103

100See supra note 77. 

101See Linda Lyons, The Gallup Brain: “One Nation Under God,”

GALLUP, Mar. 23, 2004 (reporting that 14% of Americans expressed “support for court ruling Pledge unconstitutional”), available at http://

tinyurl.com/GallupUnderGod. 

102See, e.g., Lewis v. Allen, 159 N.Y.S.2d 807 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1957),

aff’d by, 207 N.Y.S.2d 862 (N.Y. App. Div. 1960), aff’d by, 200 N.E.2d

767 (N.Y. 1964); Smith v. Denny, 280 F. Supp. 651 (E.D. Cal. 1968),

appeal dismissed, 417 F.2d 614 (9th Cir. 1969); Sherman v. Cmty. Consol.

Sch. Dist., 714 F. Supp. 932 (N.D. Ill. 1989), vacated in part by, 980 F.2d

437 (7th Cir. 1992); Myers v. Loudoun County Sch. Bd., 251 F. Supp. 2d

1262 (E.D. Va. 2003), aff’d, 418 F.3d 395 (4th Cir. 2005); Myers v. Loudoun County Sch. Bd., 500 F. Supp. 2d 539 (E.D. Va. 2007); Freedom

Found. v. Cong., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 63473 (D.N.H. Aug. 7, 2008);

see also Gladwin Hill, Suit Asks Change in Pledge to Flag, N.Y. TIMES,

June 20, 1963, at 20 (detailing Los Angeles suit); Suit Over Allegiance

Pledge Stirs County, L.A. TIMES, Oct. 23, 1963, at A1 (same); Mother

Seeks Removal of ‘God’ in Flag Pledge, N.Y. TIMES, Apr. 7, 1964, at 9

(detailing Baltimore suit); New Suit Filed By Mrs. Murray, WASH. POST,

Sept. 16, 1964, at B4 (detailing Honolulu suit). 

103Surely, the simple fact that the Supreme Court has repeatedly

declined to address the Pledge issue cannot support the proposition that it

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Second, even if we were free to do so, this court could not

reasonably adopt the doctrine of ceremonial deism in this case

because that doctrine, at least as it would be applied here,

would necessarily be predicated on a fundamentally illogical

premise. Specifically, it makes no sense to state that in the

context of the daily recitation of the amended Pledge in public

schools the phrase “under God” has, over time, “lost through

rote repetition any significant religious content.” Lynch, 465

U.S. at 716 (Brennan, J., dissenting). Prayers are regularly the

subjects of “rote repetition,” and, if anything, grow only more

religious over time. Those Christians who have recited the

Lord’s Prayer for the past two thousand years would be

shocked to learn that, by virtue of their doing so, the prayer

has lost its religious significance. So too would Jews who

have recited the Sh’ma, the Jewish declaration of faith, two

times a day for approximately the same length of time, or

Muslims who turn toward Mecca five times daily and repeat

the Shahadah, reciting the words “There is no God but God,

and Muhammad is his prophet.” The amended Pledge was

intended to be regularly recited in schools across the nation in

order to teach “the schoolchildren of America” to have “faith

in the Almighty God,” 100 Cong. Rec. 6919 (1954), and to

“train[ ] . . . our youngsters[,] . . . each time they pledge allegiance[,] . . . [to] reassert their belief . . . in the all-present,

all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful Creator,” id. at 5915.

Moreover, fifty years after the Pledge was amended to incorporate an explicitly religious message, forty-three state legislatures had passed laws either encouraging or outright

has attained longevity as a constitutionally valid practice. Cf. Lewis 200

N.E.2d 767, cert. denied 379 U.S. 923 (1964); Sherman, 980 F.2d 437,

cert. denied 508 U.S. 950 (1993); Newdow, 292 F.3d 597, rev’d on other

grounds sub nom., Elk Grove, 542 U.S. 1 (2004). Such an approach would

allow the Court itself, through the mere exercise of its certiorari discretion,

to dictate constitutional results. Cf. ANTONIN SCALIA, A MATTER OF

INTERPRETATION 45, 47 (1998) (“Panta rei is not a sufficiently informative

principle of constitutional interpretation. . . . If the Courts are free to write

the Constitution anew, they will, by God, write it the way the majority

wants[.]”). 

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requiring daily recitation of the amended version of the

Pledge in public schools. Surely the drafters and promoters of

the 1954 “under God” amendment, the Congress that so

enthusiastically enacted the religious mandate, and the hundreds of state legislators who directed the incorporation into

the school day of the religious version of the Pledge, did not

promote its daily recitation by public school students in order

to have the words “under God” become of less and less religious significance each year. 

Next, no one would suggest that the remainder of the

Pledge has lost its patriotic meaning as the years have gone

by. It would seem particularly unreasonable, therefore, to suggest that the religious phrase in the Pledge would somehow

lose its meaning through repetition while the patriotic themes

would retain their force and continue to grow even stronger

over time. See Sherman, 980 F.2d at 448 (Manion, J., concurring); cf. Van Orden, 545 U.S. at 696 (Thomas, J., concurring)

(“Repetition does not deprive religious words or symbols of

their traditional meaning. Words like ‘God’ are not vulgarities

for which the shock value diminishes with each successive

utterance.”). Perhaps most disappointed of all if the word

“God” were to lose its religious significance would be Reverend Docherty, the original proponent of the amendment, and

President Eisenhower, who said when he signed the bill incorporating the phrase “under God” in the Pledge that “millions

of our school children will daily proclaim . . . the dedication

of our Nation and our people to the Almighty” and added that

“nothing could be more inspiring than” the “rededication of

our youth” that would occur “on each school morning.”

104

Thus, another argument for ceremonial deism would appear to

be wholly without merit here.

104Statement by the President Upon Signing Bill To Include the Words

“Under God” in the Pledge to the Flag, PUB. PAPERS 563 (June 14, 1954),

available at http://tinyurl.com/PubPapersUnderGod, reprinted in 100

Cong. Rec. 8618. 

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The logical flaws inherent in the theory of ceremonial

deism as applied to the recitation of the amended Pledge in

public schools, as well as the erroneous historical assumptions

on which application of that “doctrine” to the issue before us

depends, explain why whatever the utility of the doctrine may

be in other circumstances, it is of no possible use here. These

infirmities may also explain why the theory has never actually

been adopted elsewhere. As Thomas Paine so accurately

observed, “a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives

it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises . . . a formidable outcry in defence of custom.” THOMAS PAINE,

COMMON SENSE 1 (Courier Dover Pub. 1997) (1776). In most

cases, ceremonial deism represents mainly the judiciary’s less

than courageous response to that outcry. Applying the doctrine makes it possible to conclude that in some instances

state-sponsored religious practices are not unconstitutional

simply because they enjoy broad and longstanding support

from a religious majority. One observer has written that the

doctrine can only invite abuse and, over time, will “yield[ ] an

ever expanding sphere of activities courts [will] f[i]nd to be

permissible forms of” state-sponsored religious endorsement.

Epstein, supra note 14, at 2087. Here, fortunately, we need

not speculate about the wisdom or availability of such a policy: As described supra at 4055, the Supreme Court has made

it clear that the principle of ceremonial deism may not be

applied in the case of religious practices in public schools.

C. The De Minimis Theory

The doctrine of ceremonial deism that the majority appears

at times to embrace bears a close relationship to a final rescue

theory supported by some members of this court and others.

See, e.g., Newdow v. U.S. Cong., 328 F.3d 466, 490 (9th Cir.

2003) (Fernandez, J., dissenting);105 Rapier v. Harris, 172

105The day after Newdow I was decided, a disagreement broke out on

the floor of the House of Representatives over Judge Fernandez’s embrace

of the de minimis theory in his dissent. See 107 Cong. Rec. H4125-27.

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F.3d 999, 1006 n.4 (7th Cir. 1999). This theory, which is

often referred to as the theory of the “de minimis constitutional violation,” would, if applicable, support the conclusion

that the state-sponsored, teacher-led daily recitation of the

“under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance in public

schools constitutes no more than an insignificant violation of

the Constitution causing insignificant injury that can be overlooked or ignored. Like ceremonial deism, the de minimis theory operates on an ad hoc basis to protect the religious

preferences of the majority when those preferences conflict

with the constitutional rights of the minority.106 Of course, the

Representatives Robert C. Scott and Sheila Jackson-Lee discussed the dissent with approval, but Representative Henry Hyde vehemently disagreed

with its approach: “I do not think that it is trivial. I think acknowledging

the primacy of almighty God is of transcendent importance, and I guess

de minimis is in the minds of the analysts; but I could not disagree more.”

Id.

106Although today’s majority does not embrace the de minimis theory,

its decision is animated by the same misplaced concern. The majority

seems offended that young “Roe . . . asks us to prohibit the recitation of

the Pledge by other students,” the majority of students, who believe in a

monotheistic God and have no problem regularly affirming His existence.

Maj. op. at 3874 (emphasis in original); see also id. at 3889. In the majority’s eyes, its decision today protects the rights of the religious majority

from the interfering objections of children like young Roe who harbor

minority views regarding religion. In this respect, my colleagues overlook

the fundamental principle that 

[t]he very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain

subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place

them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish

them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right

to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom

of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not

be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.

W. Va. State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 638 (1943). Indeed,

“[i]t is the highest calling of federal judges to invoke the Constitution to

repudiate unlawful majoritarian actions and, when necessary, to strike

down statutes that would infringe on fundamental rights . . . .” Newdow

v. U.S. Cong., 328 F.3d 466, 471 (9th Cir. 2003) (Reinhardt, J., concurring

in denial of petition for rehearing en banc). 

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more disenfranchised the religious minority, the more likely

it is that such a defense will succeed. But our constitutional

protections are of little value if courts refuse to employ them

on behalf of members of the most marginalized and detested

religious groups, such as atheist children like young Roe. In

a 2005 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, fully

fifty percent of Americans said that they had either a “mostly

unfavorable” or “very unfavorable” opinion of atheists.107 This

is twice the number of people who harbored similar antipathy

toward Muslims, the next least appreciated religious minority.

Indeed, “atheists are ranked lower than any other minority or

religious group when Americans are asked whether they

would vote for or approve of their child marrying a member

of that group.”

108 Any plaintiff who has ever pursued an

Establishment Clause challenge can attest to the very real

prejudice atheists experience in America. See, e.g., ELLIS,

supra note 5, at x. It is no accident that today’s plaintiffs are

known only by aliases; in the United States, in the twenty-first

century, members of a religious minority suing for their constitutional rights still face genuine danger of harassment or

physical abuse. See id.; cf. Santa Fe Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Doe,

530 U.S. 290, 294 n.1 (2000) (describing “intimidation” and

“harassment” against plaintiffs). 

Embracing the de minimis theory here would countenance

an injury to the disfavored atheist minority, as well as to others with “different” views, in order to sustain the religious

preferences of the God-fearing majority. This illustrates the

inevitable result of defining injury in the absence of empathy:109

107Pew Research Center, Fewer Say Islam Encourages Violence 13

(2005), available at http://people-press.org/reports/pdf/252.pdf. 

108Goodstein, supra note 45. 

109Empathy, a much misunderstood term, even in the world of the judiciary, means “the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing

of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.” RANDOM HOUSE DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE 468 (1979). It is a quality that is most desirable in, even if frequently absent from, today’s federal judges at all levels

of the judicial system. 

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the harms I suffer justify redress, but the harms you suffer do

not; my belief is worthy of constitutional protection, but your

belief is of no consequence. 

In any event, however tempting it might be to resolve this

case under the de minimis theory’s simple and direct

approach, once again we are not free to do so. The Supreme

Court has held that “the embarrassment and the intrusion of

[a] religious exercise cannot be refuted by arguing that . . . [it

is] of a de minimis character.” Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577,

594 (1992). The reasons for this are self-evident. As was

made clear in Abington v. Schempp, “the measure of the seriousness of a breach of the Establishment Clause has never

been thought to be the number of people who complain of it,”

374 U.S. at 264 (Brennan, J., concurring), nor is it any

defense to urge that the religious practices here may be relatively minor encroachments on the First Amendment. That

amendment is a fragile instrument. “The breach of neutrality

that is today a trickling stream may all too soon become a raging torrent and, in the words of Madison, ‘it is proper to take

alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.’ ” Id. at 225

(majority opinion). For this reason, the “Constitution . . .

requires that we keep in mind ‘the myriad, subtle ways in

which Establishment Clause values can be eroded.’ ” Santa

Fe, 530 U.S. at 314 (quoting Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U.S.

668, 694 (1984) (O’Connor, J., concurring)). 

Finally, I note that there are those who would suggest that

minor constitutional violations can be countenanced because

the judiciary will always stand vigilant in the face of more

“significant” threats against our liberty. Indeed, this was the

approach that the Supreme Court itself adopted when, at a low

point in its Establishment Clause jurisprudence, it announced

with “abundant assurance that there is no real threat [to liberty] ‘while this Court sits.’ ” Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S.

783, 795 (1983) (quoting Panhandle Oil Co. v. Mississippi ex

rel. Knox, 277 U.S. 218, 223) (1928) (Holmes, J., dissenting)). But as the history of the Pledge of Allegiance as well

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as other more significant events in judicial history demonstrate, that is not always the case. Although some might think

that judges are capable of making all of their decisions strictly

on the basis of objective legal analyses, today’s decision represents but an example of how far they may stray from the

governing law. The Marsh statement is at best aspirational.

The threat to First Amendment safeguards still exists today.

“[I]n the hands of government what might begin as tolerant

expression of religious views may end in a policy to indoctrinate and coerce.” Lee, 505 U.S. at 591-92. “[T]he First

Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these

ends by avoiding these beginnings.” W. Va. State Bd. of Educ.

v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 641 (1943). We cannot, sadly,

always count on today’s courts to protect First Amendment

freedoms, at least not those of individuals. Sometimes the reasons are difficult to discern. Here, unfortunately, those reasons would appear to be fairly obvious.

VI. Conclusion

I end where I began. Today’s majority opinion will

undoubtedly be celebrated by a large number of Americans as

a repudiation of activist, liberal, Godless judging. That is its

great appeal; it reaches the result favored by a substantial

majority of our fellow countrymen and thereby avoids the

political outcry that would follow were we to reach the constitutionally required result. Nevertheless, by reaching the result

the majority does, we have failed in our constitutional duty as

a court. Jan Roe and her child turned to the federal judiciary

in the hope that we would vindicate their constitutional rights.

There was a time when their faith in us might have been well

placed. I can only hope that such a time will return someday.

As a judge of an intermediate appellate court, I would hold

that our decision is controlled by the binding Supreme Court

precedents governing this case. We are required to follow

those precedents regardless of what we believe the law should

be or what we think that the Supreme Court may hold in the

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future. Were today’s majority to examine the amended Pledge

as applied “through the unsentimental eye of our settled doctrine, it would have to strike it down as a clear violation of the

Establishment Clause.” Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783,

796 (1983) (Brennan, J., dissenting). Following settled precedents, I conclude that the state-directed, teacher-led daily recitation in public schools of the amended “under God” version

of the Pledge of Allegiance, unlike the recitation of the historic secular version, without the two added words, contravenes the rules and principles set forth in Lemon v. Kurtzman,

Santa Fe v. Doe, and Lee v. Weisman. Accordingly, we are,

in my view, required to hold that the amendment, as applied,

violates the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. I should add that I firmly believe that the existing

Supreme Court cases and doctrine reflect the true purpose and

values of the Establishment Clause and of our Constitution as

a whole, and that the holding that we should, but do not, reach

best ensures the rights and liberties of the schoolchildren of

this country. Finally, I firmly believe that any retreat from the

existing Supreme Court doctrine and cases would constitute

a most unfortunate diminution of the freedom of all our citizens.

Had my views prevailed here, our decision would not preclude daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by public

schoolchildren. To the contrary, public schoolchildren would

be free to recite the Pledge as it stood for more than sixty

years, a patriotic Pledge with which many of us grew up —

a patriotic Pledge that is fully consistent with the Establishment Clause. All that would be required would be the deletion

of the two words added by an amendment designed to promote religion and to indoctrinate schoolchildren with a religious belief. As has long been agreed in this nation, the

teaching of religious views is the function of the family and

the Church, not the State and the public school system. 

As a judge of this court, I deeply regret the majority’s decision to ignore the Pledge’s history, the clear intent and purNEWDOW v. RIO LINDA USD 4065

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pose of Congress in amending the Pledge, the numerous

Supreme Court precedents that render the school district’s

course of conduct unconstitutional as applied, and the very

real constitutional injury suffered by Jan Roe and her child,

and others like them throughout this nation. 

Accordingly, I dissent.

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