So Fla Newspaper Ed: "What's the problem?" with the pledge

Allegiance

South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
Posted September 19 2005

ISSUE: Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in schools is ruled unconstitutional.

It looks like the U.S. Supreme Court will have to settle the issue of the Pledge of Allegiance once and for all, or petty and self-indulgent plaintiffs will continue to challenge a half-century-old tradition on grounds that can only be described as ridiculous.

Once again a federal court in San Francisco has ruled the recitation of the pledge in public schools unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton said the pledge's reference to God was a violation of the right to be "free from a coercive requirement to affirm God," the Associated Press reported.

Karlton said he was bound by a 2002 ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. But that decision held that the reference to God was unconstitutional even if noncompulsory.

That's just one of the senseless and inconsistent aspects of these rulings. There is no legal penalty for simply omitting the words "under God" when reciting the pledge. So where's the coercion? And if there's no coercion, then what's the problem?

There is also a case to be made for harmless tradition. The late U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist once wrote a majority opinion upholding the court's 1966 Miranda decision, which requires police to advise suspects of their rights, even though he personally disagreed with that decision. But in defending it, he wrote that "Miranda has become embedded in routine police practice to the point where the warnings have become part of our national culture."

So it is with the Pledge of Allegiance and its reference to God. The Supreme Court should agree to hear the case and then uphold the pledge's constitutionality -- after beginning its session, as it always does, with the words "God save the United States and this honorable court."

BOTTOM LINE: The Supreme Court should take the case and uphold the pledge's constitutionality.