Pledge recital: invalid once more
on Sep 14, 2005 at 7:44 pm
(This is another in a continuing series of reports on the impact of Supreme Court rulings on later lower court cases.)
A federal judge in Sacramento — in a ruling that got immediate, critical mention at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings in Washington on the Chief Justice nomination — on Wednesday ruled that it violates the rights of public school children in three California districts for students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day — so long as the phrase “under God” is included. The judge did not strike down the Pledge with that phrase in it, but merely barred its recital in the three districts.
Senior U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton, who has been on the federal bench for 26 years since being appointed by President Jimmy Carter, ruled that he had no choice but to follow a Ninth Circuit decision in February 2003 that the recital was unconstitutional. That decision is still binding, the judge concluded, even though the Supreme Court reversed that ruling on procedural grounds in its 5-3 ruling in Elk Grove School District v. Newdow in June 2004.
The new ruling came in a case involving atheist parents who object to having their children hear a daily recital of the phrase with the reference to God included. This was a new lawsuit, initiated by, among others, Sacramento atheist Michael A. Newdow, who figured in the case that went to the Supreme Court. But Judge Karlton found — as the Supreme Court did in the first case — that Newdow himself had no right to bring his constitutional challenge. However, other parents did, according to the judge.
When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Newdow case, it declined to rule on the constitutionality of public school pupils’ recital of the Pledge. Instead, it found that Michael Newdow lacked “standing” to sue to challenge that practice.
But Judge Karlton ruled that the type of “standing” that the Supreme Court had found lacking in the first case did not undermine the substance of the Ninth Circuit’s ruling against the recital. Newdow’s lack of standing, the judge said, did not deprive the courts of jurisdiction entirely to hear his case, and thus the Ninth Circuit decision remains a precedent that is controlling on the constitutional point for all courts in that Circuit.
The Becket Fund, a religious advocacy group, promised an immediate appeal of the case to the Ninth Circuit.
Republican senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee inserted in their comments and questions references to Judge Karlton’s decision, using it to illustrate their abiding complaint about “activist” courts. Some of those references were inaccurate, suggesting that the judge had struck down the Pledge itself, or that the ruling had come from the Ninth Circuit.
In its 2003 decision, the Ninth Circuit had found that recital of the Pledge as written in public school classrooms had a “coercive” effect on children from families with atheistic beliefs. That is the outcome that Judge Karlton applied anew Wednesday.
The American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal advocacy group, said the new ruling “underscores the importance of the federal judiciary and who serves on the Supreme Court of the United States.”
Howard Bashman has an interesting post on the decision.
