The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Leave it to certain members of the Arizona Legislature to kick sleeping dogs.
Recently, the House Government and Elections Committee forwarded to the full chamber a bill requiring that children in K-4 grades of public school be made to recite daily the Pledge of Allegiance.
Children whose parents voiced religious objections would be exempted. Students in higher grades would be compelled to engage in a minute of “quiet reflection and moral reasoning.” Have any idea what that means?
One of the bill’s supporters, Rep. Kevin Payne, R-Peoria, said he was “amazed” that many Arizonans had already expressed opposition to the proposed law. “I just don’t get it,” he said. “I thought we were in America.”
Liberal Protestant minister Frances Bellamy composed the pledge in 1892. As a secular nationalist, he included no religious references. It had no official status until Congress formally adopted it in 1942. To highlight America’s Cold War opposition to “godless communism,” in 1954 Congress added the words “under God” to the text.
During the 1930s, thousands of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany were sent to concentration camps for refusing to salute the Nazi flag. They based their objection on a literal reading of Exodus that forbade bowing down to any earthly graven image.
As soon as Congress adopted the pledge, West Virginia’s Board of Education required that all children enrolled in public schools recite the pledge accompanied by a stiffed armed salute. Students refusing to do so were to be expelled as delinquents. Offending parents would be charged with contributing to delinquency, fined and subject to jail for 30 days. Previous state and federal court rulings granted school authorities wide leeway in compelling behavior and mandating or forbidding speech.
Marie and Gathie Barnette were Jehovah’s Witnesses attending public school near Charleston. When, in defiance of the state requirement, their parents instructed them not to salute and pledge to the flag, they were expelled from school and classified as delinquents. Their parents faced criminal charges. The Barnettes claimed the state had violated their constitutionally protected free exercise of religion. The case soon reached the Supreme Court.
Although the high court refused to consider challenges to other wartime violations of civil liberties — most notoriously the government’s internment of over 100,000 Japanese-Americans — the justices agreed to review the Barnettes’ claim.
In a landmark 6-3 decision written by Justice Robert H. Jackson (released on June 14, 1943, Flag Day!), the court overturned precedents holding that the constitution imposed few restrictions on school authorities and that students had very limited constitutional rights.
Jackson based his argument largely on the First Amendment’s free speech provision rather than the language guaranteeing free exercise of religion. Free speech and related constitutional rights, he asserted, were generally “beyond the reach of majorities and officials.”
During both war and peace, Jackson insisted, the First Amendment barred “compulsory unification of opinion.” “If there is one fixed star in our constitutional constellation,” he declared, it is that “no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” Simply put, government could not compel citizens or students to profess a belief.
In spite of this ruling, flag pledging issues resurfaced periodically. During the 1960s, many high school students were threatened with suspension for refusing to recite the pledge as a protest against the Vietnam War.
At a pivotal point in the 1988 presidential election campaign, George H.W. Bush attacked Michael Dukakis for vetoing as governor a Massachusetts’ bill requiring that teachers lead their class in reciting the pledge. Citing the Barnette decision, Dukakis questioned the law’s constitutionality. Bush promptly responded by visiting a flag factory and — quite literally — wrapping himself in the American flag for a photo opportunity. He won in a landslide.
About 30 years ago, I mentioned the Barnette case in my U.S. history course while discussing domestic politics during World War II. After class, a woman about my age — older than most of her fellow students — approached me to say she appreciated my description of the court case. Surprised by her interest, I asked why. “Well,” she replied, most people had never heard of it but “my mother was the Barnette girl you talked about. It was nice that you explained what she experienced.”
Several of the Arizona legislators promoting the compulsory pledge bill aggressively challenged the results of the 2020 presidential election, claiming the Legislature’s right to overturn the popular vote.
As a citizen and (retired) educator, I hope these politicians reflect more deeply on the meaning of representative democracy and the contested history of the pledge. Like Rep. Payne, I, too “thought we were in America.”
