For some bizarre reason, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that *Under God* is okay in the Pledge because the overall tone is patriotic. From Circuit Judge Bea, p 5.

The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded and for which we continue to strive: one Nation under God—the Founding Fathers’ belief that the people of this nation are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; indivisible—although we have individual states, they are united in one Republic; with liberty —the government cannot take away the people’s inalienable rights; and justice for all—everyone in America is entitled to “equal justice under the law” (as is inscribed above the main entrance to our Supreme Court). Millions of people daily recite these words when pledging allegiance to the United States of America:

Let's just look at this. Founding Fathers? You mean that ones that believed in liberty and justice for all, as long as you were a white propertied landowner? Don't forget that women at that time were not equal and didn't get the vote until 1920. And what about blacks? The Bible proposes that slavery is good, so certainly the liberty and justice didn't apply to slaves. Of course the phrase *One Nation Under God* does not appear in the constitution or the Bill of Rights, only the pledge, which was not in existence in the 1700's. And not even then until 1954.

The Founding Fathers didn't write the pledge. Francis Bellamy, cousin to Edward Bellamy, did, in 1892.  Bellamy was a socialist. I know a lof of the people who come here to read have knee-jerk reactions against socialism, so one would assume they would also have a reaction against saying the pledge, given its origins. Note also that the pledge, as originally done, was with a one arm (stiff arm) salute to the flag). What does that picture on the left remind YOU of?

While using The Google and looking up old photos of schoolchildren doing a stiff one armed salute to the flag, I found this illustration from a book from "The Youth's Companion".  I've also seen a picture from the 1940's that shows schoolchildren pledging in a military gesture across their chests, as opposed to hands over hearts.

Given that the pledge is a not a Founding Father's invention and was only changed to include Under God in the McCarthy era (1954), it's pretty clear that the if one was going to attempt to be *1* to some previous standard, not only would the phrase *under god* not be in it, but we'd all do it in the style proscribed!

In other words, if one took the opposite view, if you want to say the pledge the way it USED to be, pre-1954, sans "Under God", you 're not living up to the gist of the patriotic exercise. Pah. It IS a violation of separation of church and state. That said, nobody has to say the pledge of allegiance, not in school or anywhere, and nobody has to say the words "under god". I read recently of a group of people who attended government meetings and said the pledge the way it was, since it didn't, since the late 1800's when it was written contain that phrase.I also read today on some libertarian sites where hte writers there don't say the pledge because the original author of the pledge was a socialist! So there you have it. Not mandatory and probably particularly not so if you don't want to conflate patriotism with religion. Here's a comment by American Humanists.

“The government should not be supporting particular religious views,” said Speckhardt. “Even a statement as non-specific and supposedly all-encompassing as ‘In God We Trust’ sends the 0 message that America is a monotheistic country. That excludes the nearly 30 million Americans who don’t identify with a religion, as well as the many others, such as Buddhists and Hindus, who don’t subscribe to monotheism. I don't trust in any god, nor do I see evidence that belief in God unites Americans or the people of any other diverse nation.”

Speckhardt said he would support an appeal to the Supreme Court. “We will keep fighting to restore the Pledge to its original, non-sectarian form. Neither adults nor children should feel that in order to be an American citizen they should hold particular religious views.”

David Niose, lawyer and president of the American Humanist Association, concluded by adding, "By adding the words 'under God' in 1954 at the height of the McCarthy era, America unfortunately made itself divisible, not indivisible. With the Pledge in its current religious form, rather than its original inclusive form, millions of secular Americans are excluded. This is one nation, very divided."

Of course, the law also says no one has to recite the pledge. It's too bad that if one decided NOT to recite it, others might, on the basis of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, assume that that might make one unpatriotic, which of course is a 0 assumption. Especially since saying the pledge is optional.

In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said no federal law requires students to recite the pledge or the religious reference in it.

I remember reading a long time ago a court case involving Jehovah's Witnesses and the flag. JWs did not want to be coerced into showing what they viewed as worship to an image. And they won their case.

More from Bea. The circuit court said that because the *under god* phrase is not the chief purpose of the pledge, it's existence doesn't make much difference because the pledge is primarily patriotic. If that's so, then why have it in there?

B. The primary or principal effect of the Pledge is neither to advance nor inhibit religion. [9] The Supreme Court has said the Pledge is a “common public acknowledgment of the ideals that our flag symbolizes. Its recitation is a patriotic exercise designed to foster national unity and pride in those principles.” Elk Grove, 542 U.S. at 6. The Pledge also has the permissible secular effect of promoting an appreciation of the values and ideals that define our nation. The recitation of the Pledge is designed to evoke feelings of patriotism, pride, and love of country, not of divine
fulfillment or spiritual enlightenment. In sum, the students are simply supporting the nation through their Pledge “to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.” Thus, the Pledge passes Lemon’s second prong.
Next, we turn to the hotly contested issue in this case, whether Congress’ purpose in enacting the Pledge of Allegiance was predominantly patriotic or religious.

The third prong of the Lemon test was characterized as follows.

In 2002, Congress’ purpose in reaffirming the Pledge by enacting 4 U.S.C. § 4 was predominantly secular. The phrase “under God”, when read in context with the whole of the Pledge, has the predominant purpose and effect of adding a solemn and inspiring note to what should be a solemn and inspiring promise—a promise of allegiance to our Republic.

Again, if the idea is to inspire allegiance to the Republic, that is the GOVERNMENT, and not to a deity. The Circuit Court has definitely missed the mark, here.

p 61 of the decision begins Justice Reinhardt's dissention with the majority

Were this a case to be decided on the basis of the law or the Constitution, the outcome would be clear. Under no sound legal analysis adhering to binding Supreme Court precedent could this court uphold state-directed, teacher-led, daily recitation of the “under God” version of the Pledge of Allegiance by children in public schools. It is not the recitation of the Pledge as it long endured that is at issue here, but its recitation with the congressionally added two words, “under God” — words added in 1954 for the specific religious purpose, among others, of indoctrinating public schoolchildren with a religious belief. The recitations of the amended version as conducted by the Rio Linda Union and other school districts fail all three of the Court’s Establishment Clause tests: The recitation of the Pledge in its historic secular version would not fail any of them. Only a desire to change the rules regarding the separation of church and state or an unwillingness to place this court on the unpopular side of a highly controversial dispute regarding both patriotism and religion could explain the decision the members of the majority reach here and the lengths to which their muddled and self-contradictory decision goes in order to reach the result they do.
To put it bluntly, no judge familiar with the history of the Pledge could in good conscience believe, as today’s majority purports to do, that the words “under God” were inserted into the Pledge for any purpose other than an explicitly and predominantly religious one: “to recognize the power and the universality of God in our pledge of allegiance;” to “acknowledge the dependence of our people, and our Government upon the moral direction and the restraints of religion,” 100 Cong. Rec. 7590-91 (1954); and to indoctrinate schoolchildren in the belief that God exists, id. at 5915, 6919. Nor could any judge familiar with controlling Supreme Court precedent seriously deny that carrying out such an indoctrination in a public school classroom unconstitutionally forces many young children either to profess a religious belief antithetical to their personal views or to declare themselves through their silence or nonparticipation to be protesting nonbelievers, thereby subjecting themselves to hostility and ridicule.
It is equally clear that no judge familiar with our constitutional history and the history of the Pledge could legitimately rely on a 2002 “reaffirmation” to justify the incorporation of the words “under God” into the Pledge in 1954 by a statutory amendment, or suggest that, in determining the question before us, we should not look to that amendment but only to the Pledge itself, as if the finite act in 1954 of transforming a purely secular patriotic pledge into a vehicle to promote religion, and to indoctrinate public schoolchildren with a belief in God, had never occurred. Finally, no such judge could ignore the fact that in a clearly controlling decision that binds us here the Supreme Court has directed us, in deciding a constitutional question such as we now face, to examine the 1954 amendment and why it was adopted rather than to look to the pertinent statute, here the Pledge, as a whole. See Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 58-61 (1985).

The undeniably religious purpose of the “under God” amendment to the Pledge and the inherently coercive nature of its teacher-led daily recitation in public schools ought to be sufficient under any Establishment Clause analysis to vindicate Jan Roe and her child’s constitutional claim, and to require that the Pledge of Allegiance, when recited as part of
a daily state-directed, teacher-led program, be performed in its original, pre-amendment secular incarnation that served us so
well for generations. Surely, our original Pledge, without the McCarthy-era effort to indoctrinate our nation’s children with a state-held religious belief, was no less patriotic. For purposes of this case, the only difference between the original secular Pledge and the amended religious version is that the former did not subject, and was not designed to subject, our children to an attempt by their government to impose on them a religious belief regarding the existence of God. We should indeed have had more faith in our country, our citizens, and our Constitution than we exhibited at the peak of the McCarthy era when we enacted the religious amendment to our Pledge of Allegiance, in part to inculcate in our children a belief in God. In doing so, we abandoned our historic principle that secular matters were for the state and matters of faith were for the church. The majority does so again today, sadly, by twisting, distorting, and misrepresenting the law, as well as the issues that are before us.
Today’s majority opinion will undoubtedly be celebrated, at least publicly, by almost all political figures, and by many citizens as well, without regard for the constitutional principles it violates and without regard for the judicial precedents it defies and distorts, just as this court’s decision in Newdow I1 was condemned by so many who did not even bother to read it and simply rushed to join the political bandwagon. As before, there will be little attention paid to the constitutional rights of the minority or to the fundamental tenets of the Establishment Clause. Instead, to the joy or relief, as the case may be, of the two members of the majority, this court’s willingness to abandon its constitutional responsibilities will be praised as patriotic and may even burnish the court’s reputation among those who believe that it adheres too strictly to the dictates of the Constitution or that it values excessively the mandate of the Bill of Rights.

One  more that I love from him. YOu have to read the whole thing.

I do not doubt that many Americans feel bound together by their faith in God, but whatever beliefs may be shared by a majority of our citizens, it is respect for the rights of minorities and for the Constitution itself that must bind us all.

Updating to add another interesting argument about this I saw, by Alonzo Fyfe.

The dissent argued that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge this law, but the majority disagreed.

Plaintiffs do not have standing to challenge the 1954 Amendment because no federal statute requires plaintiffs to recite the Pledge. Even under the School District's Policy, children "may choose not to participate in the flag salute for personal reasons" or they can simply omit any words they find offensive.

Using this logic, Jews would have no right to complain or object to changing the Pledge of Allegiance to say, "one Nation, without Jews" so long as Jews were not forced to cite the offensive words.

Similarly, a pledge of allegiance to "one white Nation, indivisible . . ." would not give blacks any legitimate claim to have been harmed by such a law - even after showing that in the shadow of such a law 99.99% of all elected officials in the country were white, and national polls showed that, in the opinion of white Americans, blacks were the least patriotic of all social groups and considered "the group least likely to share American values."

This is not a posting on what the law says. I am not a lawyer and it is not my interest or intention to provide a judgment on what does and does not count as standing. It may well be 1 that black people would have no legal standing to challenge a law changing the Pledge of Allegiance to "one white nation."

This is a moral blog, and it is certainly the case that blacks would have the moral standing to condemn such an amendment and to assert that no good person would support it. Jews have a moral standing to object to a Pledge of Allegiance to "one nation without Jews" and to assert that no good person would support it. Atheists have a moral standing to object to a Pledge of Allegiance that defines atheists as unpatriotic, and to assert that no good person would support it.

Yes, it would be one level of wrong for the government to force you to state that you molest children, even though it is blatantly 0. However, this wrong is not made right by the government encouraging everybody else to say that you molest children, but grants you the right to refrain from saying the offensive words. You are still going to suffer the harms that come from the attitudes that the government is putting in the minds of everyone else.

....

Now, as if to emphasize the assertion that only those who support a nation under God are patriots and those who do not support such a notion are not patriots, we have a scene where those who support the notion pledge allegiance to the United States while those who do not remain seated and refuse to do so.