Source: http://www.joeldufresnecase.com/supreme-court-opinions-federal/children-opinions/minersville-school-district-v-board-of-education
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 16:51:11+00:00

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1. A state regulation requiring that pupils in the public schools, on pain of expulsion, participate in a daily ceremony of saluting the national flag whilst reciting in unison a pledge of allegiance to it "and to the Republic for which it stands; one Nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" -- held within the scope of legislative power, and consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment, as applied to children brought up in, and entertaining, a conscientious religious belief that such obeisance to the flag is forbidden by the Bible and that the Bible, as the Word of God, is the supreme authority. P. 591.
2. Religious convictions do not relieve the individual from obedience to an otherwise valid general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. P. 594.
3. So far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, it is within the province of the legislatures and school authorities of the several States to adopt appropriate means to evoke and foster a sentiment of national unity among the children in the public schools. P. 597.
4. This Court cannot exercise censorship over the conviction of legislatures that a particular program or exercise will best promote in the minds of children who attend the common schools an attachment to the institutions of their country, nor overrule the local judgment against granting exemptions from observance of such a program. P. 598.
A grave responsibility confronts this Court whenever, in course of litigation, it must reconcile the conflicting claims of liberty and authority. But when the liberty invoked is liberty of conscience, and the authority is authority to safeguard the nation's fellowship, judicial conscience is put to its severest test. Of such a nature is the present controversy.
The Gobitis children were of an age for which Pennsylvania makes school attendance compulsory. Thus, they were denied a free education, and their parents had to put them into private schools. To be relieved of the financial burden thereby entailed, their father, on behalf of the children and in his own behalf, brought this suit. He sough to enjoin the authorities from continuing to exact participation in the flag salute ceremony as a condition of his children's attendance at the Minersville school. After trial of the issues, Judge Maris gave relief in the District Court, 24 F.Supp. 271, on the basis of a thoughtful opinion at a preliminary stage of the litigation, 21 F.Supp. 581; his decree was affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals, 108 F.2d 683. Since this decision ran counter to several per curiam dispositions of this Court, [n2] we granted certiorari to give the matter full reconsideration. 309 U.S. 645. By their able submissions, he Committee on the Bill of Rights of the American Bar Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, as friends of the Court, have helped us to our conclusion.
We must decide whether the requirement of participation in such a ceremony, exacted from a child who refuses [p593] upon sincere religious grounds, infringes without due process of law the liberty guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Certainly the affirmative pursuit of one's convictions about the ultimate mystery of the universe and man's relation to it is placed beyond the reach of law. Government may not interfere with organized or individual expression of belief or disbelief. Propagation of belief -- or even of disbelief -- in the supernatural is protected, whether in church or chapel, mosque or synagogue, tabernacle or meetinghouse. Likewise, the Constitution assures generous immunity to the individual from imposition of penalties for offending, in the course of his own religious activities, the religious views of others, be they a minority or those who are dominant in government. Cantwell v. Connecticut, ante, p. 296.
But the manifold character of man's relations may bring his conception of religious duty into conflict with the secular interests of his fellow men. When does the constitutional guarantee compel exemption from doing what society thinks necessary for the promotion of some great common end, or from a penalty for conduct which appears dangerous to the general good? To state the [p594] problem is to recall the truth that no single principle can answer all of life's complexities. The right to freedom of religious belief, however dissident and however obnoxious to the cherished beliefs of others -- even of a majority -- is itself the denial of an absolute. But to affirm that the freedom to follow conscience has itself no limits in the life of a society would deny that very plurality of principles which, as a matter of history, underlies protection of religious toleration. Compare Mr. Justice Holmes in Hudson Water Co. v. McCarter, 209 U.S. 349, 355. Our present task, then, as so often the case with courts, is to reconcile two rights in order to prevent either from destroying the other. But, because, in safeguarding conscience, we are dealing with interests so subtle and so dear, every possible leeway should be given to the claims of religious faith.
Situations like the present are phases of the profoundest problem confronting a democracy -- the problem which Lincoln cast in memorable dilemma: "Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?" No mere textual reading or logical talisman can solve the dilemma. And when the issue demands judicial determination, it is not the personal notion of judges of what wise adjustment requires which must prevail.
. . . the flag is the symbol of the Nation's power, the emblem of freedom in its truest, best sense. . . . it signifies government resting on the consent of the governed; liberty regulated by law; the protection of the weak against the strong; security against the exercise of arbitrary power, and absolute safety for free institutions against foreign aggression.
The case before us must be viewed as though the legislature of Pennsylvania had itself formally directed the flag salute for the children of Minersville; had made no exemption for children whose parents were possessed of conscientious scruples like those of the Gobitis family, and had indicated its belief in the desirable ends to be secured by having its public school children share a common experience at those periods of development when their minds are supposedly receptive to its assimilation, by an exercise appropriate in time and place and setting, and one designed to evoke in them appreciation of the nation's hopes and dreams, its sufferings and sacrifices. The precise issue, then, for us to decide is whether the legislatures of the various states and the authorities in a thousand counties and school districts of this country are barred from determining the appropriateness of various means to evoke that unifying sentiment without which there can ultimately be no liberties, civil or religious. [n5] To stigmatize legislative judgment in providing for this universal gesture of respect for the symbol of our national life in the setting of the common school as a lawless inroad on that freedom of conscience which the Constitution protects, would amount to no less than the pronouncement of pedagogical and psychological dogma in a field where courts possess no marked and certainly no [p598] controlling competence. The influences which help toward a common feeling for the common country are manifold. Some may seem harsh, and others no doubt are foolish. Surely, however, the end is legitimate. And the effective means for its attainment are still so uncertain and so unauthenticated by science as to preclude us from putting the widely prevalent belief in flag saluting beyond the pale of legislative power. It mocks reason and denies our whole history to find in the allowance of a requirement to salute our flag on fitting occasions the seeds of sanction for obeisance to a leader.
The wisdom of training children in patriotic impulses by those compulsions which necessarily pervade so much of the educational process is not for our independent judgment. Even were we convinced of the folly of such a measure, such belief would be no proof of its unconstitutionality. For ourselves, we might be tempted to say that the deepest patriotism is best engendered by giving unfettered scope to the most crochety beliefs. Perhaps it is best, even from the standpoint of those interests which ordinances like the one under review seek to promote, to give to the least popular sect leave from conformities like those here in issue. But the courtroom is not the arena for debating issues of educational policy. It is not our province to choose among competing considerations in the subtle process of securing effective loyalty to the traditional ideals of democracy, while respecting at the same time individual idiosyncracies among a people so diversified in racial origins and religious allegiances. So to hold would, in effect, make us the school board for the country. That authority has not been given to this Court, nor should we assume it.
We are dealing here with the formative period in the development of citizenship. Great diversity of psychological and ethical opinion exists among us concerning the best way to train children for their place in society. Because [p599] of these differences and because of reluctance to permit a single, iron-cast system of education to be imposed upon a nation compounded of so many strains, we have held that, even though public education is one of our most cherished democratic institutions, the Bill of Rights bars a state from compelling all children to attend the public schools. Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510. But it is a very different thing for this Court to exercise censorship over the conviction of legislatures that a particular program or exercise will best promote in the minds of children who attend the common schools an attachment to the institutions of their country.
What the school authorities are really asserting is the right to awaken in the child's mind considerations as to the significance of the flag contrary to those implanted by the parent. In such an attempt, the state is normally at a disadvantage in competing with the parent's authority, so long -- and this is the vital aspect of religious toleration -- as parents are unmolested in their right to counteract by their own persuasiveness the wisdom and rightness of those loyalties which the state's educational system is seeking to promote. Except where the transgression of constitutional liberty is too plain for argument, personal freedom is best maintained -- so long as the remedial channels of the democratic process remain open and unobstructed [n6] -- when it is ingrained in a people's habits, and not enforced against popular policy by the coercion of adjudicated law. That the flag salute is an allowable portion of a school program for those who do not invoke conscientious scruples is surely not debatable. But for us to insist that, though the ceremony may be required, exceptional immunity must be [p600] given to dissidents, is to maintain that there is no basis for a legislative judgment that such an exemption might introduce elements of difficulty into the school discipline, might cast doubts in the minds of the other children which would themselves weaken the effect of the exercise.
The preciousness of the family relation, the authority and independence which give dignity to parenthood, indeed the enjoyment of all freedom, presuppose the kind of ordered society which is summarized by our flag. A society which is dedicated to the preservation of these ultimate values of civilization may, in self-protection, utilize the educational process for inculcating those almost unconscious feelings which bind men together in a comprehending loyalty, whatever may be their lesser differences and difficulties. That is to say, the process may be utilized so long as men's right to believe as they please, to win others to their way of belief, and their right to assemble in their chosen places of worship for the devotional ceremonies of their faith, are all fully respected.
5. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: . . .
2. Leoles v. Landers, 302 U.S. 656; Hering v. State Board of Education, 303 U.S. 624; Gabrielli v. Knickerbocker, 306 U.S. 621; Johnson v. Deerfield, 306 U.S. 621; 307 U.S. 650. Compare New York v. Sandstrom, 279 N.Y. 523; 18 N.E.2d 840; Nicholls v. Mayor and School Committee of Lynn, 7 N.E.2d 577 (Mass.).
3. Compare II Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Ford ed.) p. 102; 3 Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, pp. 274, 307-308; 1 Rhode Island Colonial Records, pp. 378-80; 2 Id. pp. 6; Wiener, Roger Williams' Contribution to Modern Thought, 28 Rhode Island Historical Society Collections, No. 1; Ernst, The Political Thought of Roger Williams, chap. VII; W. K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, passim. See Commonwealth v. Herr, 229 Pa. 132; 78 A. 68.
4. For the origin and history of the American flag, see 8 Journals of the Continental Congress, p. 464; 22 id., pp. 338-340; Annals of Congress, 15th Cong., 1st Sess., Vol. 1, pp. 566 et seq.; id., Vol. 2, pp. 1458 et seq.
5. Compare Balfour, Introduction to Bagehot's English Constitution, p. XXII; Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, pp. 110-111.
6. In cases like Fiske v. Kansas, 274 U.S. 380; De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353; Lovell v. Griffin, 303 U.S. 444; Hague v. CIO, 307 U.S. 496, and Schneider v. State, 308 U.S. 147, the Court was concerned with restrictions cutting off appropriate means through which, in a free society, the processes of popular rule may effectively function.
7. It is to be noted that the Congress has not entered the field of legislation here under consideration.

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