In both types of cases, if a lower court refuses to uphold an individual's rights, he or she can appeal the decision to a higher level, sometimes all the way up to the state or US Supreme Court. But the government can also appeal constitutional issues, and sometimes lower court decisions are overturned at a higher level. Like politicians, courts respond to social trends and movements. In the 1950s and '60s, as African Americans, and then women, trade unionists, gays and lesbians, the disabled, and other groups began to demand their rights, these rights were gradually upheld by the courts and embraced by the legislatures. But with the coming of the new conservatism in the 1980s, civil liberties and rights won in the 1960s and '70s have come under attack once again.
Students are among the groups that have stood up and demanded their rights.
In 1943 they won their first victory in the US Supreme Court. The students were Jehovah's Witnesses, who refused to salute the flag because this violated their religious beliefs. Ever since the flag salute was first introduced in 1892 as part of the celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus' encounter with the Americas, there were protests that a compulsory flag salute was an insult to freedom of thought and to love of country, as George Washington had himself believed. I when schools were encouraged to promote patriotism. In 1935, two Jehovah's Witness students in Pennsylvania were expelled from school for refusing to salute the flag.