The Pledge of Allegiance is a patriotic recited verse that promises allegiance to the flag of the United States and the republic of the United States of America. The first version, with a text different from the one used at present, was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army officer in the Civil War who later authored a book on how to teach patriotism to children in public schools. In 1892, Francis Bellamy revised Balch's verse as part of a magazine promotion surrounding the World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the Americas. Bellamy, the circulation manager for The Youth's Companion magazine, helped persuade then-president Benjamin Harrison to institute Columbus Day as a national holiday and lobbied Congress for a national school celebration of the day. The magazine sent leaflets containing part of Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance to schools across the country and on October 21, 1892, over 10,000 children recited the verse together.
Michael Arthur Newdow is an American attorney and emergency medicine physician. He is best known for his efforts to have recitations of the current version of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools in the United States declared unconstitutional because of its inclusion of the phrase "under God". He also filed and lost a lawsuit to stop the invocation prayer at President Bush's second inauguration and in 2009 he filed a lawsuit to prevent references to God and religion from being part of President Obama's inauguration.
"Separation of church and state" is a metaphor paraphrased from Thomas Jefferson and used by others in discussions regarding the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution which reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."
In United States law, the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, together with that Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, form the constitutional right of freedom of religion. The relevant constitutional text is:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion...
McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky, 545 U.S. 844 (2005), was a case argued before the Supreme Court of the United States on March 2, 2005. At issue was whether the Court should continue to inquire into the purpose behind a religious display and whether evaluation of the government's claim of secular purpose for the religious displays may take evolution into account under an Establishment Clause of the First Amendment analysis.
Ceremonial deism is a legal term used in the United States to designate governmental religious references and practices deemed to be mere cultural rituals and not inherently religious because of long customary usage. Proposed examples of ceremonial deism include the reference to God introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, the phrase "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, and the Ohio state motto, "With God, all things are possible".
The Thomas More Law Center is a Christian, conservative, nonprofit, public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and active throughout the United States. According to the Thomas More Law Center website, its goals are to "preserve America's Judeo-Christian heritage, defend the religious freedom of Christians, restore time-honored moral and family values, protect the sanctity of human life, and promote a strong national defense and a free and sovereign United States of America."
The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States has been criticized on several grounds. Its use in government funded schools has been the most controversial, as critics contend that a government-sanctioned endorsement of religion violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Arguments against the pledge include that the pledge itself is incompatible with democracy and freedom, that it is a form of nationalistic indoctrination, that pledges of allegiance are features of totalitarian states such as Nazi Germany, and that the pledge was written to sell flags.
In the United States, freedom of religion is a constitutionally protected right provided in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. As stated in the Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...". Freedom of religion is linked to the countervailing principle of separation of church and state, a concept advocated by Colonial founders such as Dr. John Clarke, Roger Williams, William Penn, and later Founding Fathers such as James Madison and Thomas Jefferson.
Alfred Theodore Goodwin was an American jurist who was a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and also a district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon. Goodwin wrote the majority opinion for the Ninth Circuit in the famous pledge of allegiance case that was decided by the United States Supreme Court as Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow. Goodwin found that the recitation of the Pledge with the words "under God" violated the Establishment Clause, but the Supreme Court reversed his ruling. Goodwin famously wrote, "A profession that we are a nation 'under God' is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation 'under Jesus,' a nation 'under Vishnu,' a nation 'under Zeus,' or a nation 'under no god,' because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion."
The Pledge Protection Act is proposed legislation in the United States Congress that seeks to deprive all Federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction to hear constitutional challenges to the Pledge of Allegiance or its recitation. The bill was first introduced in response to a constitutional challenge to the Pledge by atheist Michael Newdow.
Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District, Nos. 05–17257, 05–17344, and 06–15093, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decision that upheld the constitutionality of the teacher-led recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by students in public schools. The 2–1 majority found that the recitation did not constitute an establishment of religion prohibited by the United States Constitution.
Summers v. Adams, 669 F. Supp. 2d 637, was a case where the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina ruled that South Carolina's "I Believe" Act was unconstitutional for violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The law authorized the state's Department of Motor Vehicles to create a license plate that had to contain "the words 'I Believe' and a cross superimposed on a stained glass window."
The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) has been a standing body of the U.S. House of Representatives since 1993 that directs the activities of the House Office of General Counsel. BLAG can direct the General Counsel to participate in litigation or file an amicus curiae brief in cases involving the interests of the House or BLAG can call for legislation or a House resolution authorizing the General Counsel to represent the House itself. BLAG comprises five members of House leadership:
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
Trump v. Hawaii, No. 17-965, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case involving Presidential Proclamation 9645 signed by President Donald Trump, which restricted travel into the United States by people from several nations, or by refugees without valid travel documents. Hawaii and several other states and groups challenged the Proclamation and two predecessor executive orders also issued by Trump on statutory and constitutional grounds. Citing a variety of statements by Trump and administration officials, they argued that the proclamation and its predecessor orders were motivated by anti-Muslim animus.
Charles LiMandri is an American lawyer. In a case that made national headlines, he litigated against the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the defense of the Mount Soledad Cross in San Diego. The battle over the religious symbol, which lasted more than 25 years, is one of the longest in the history on the United States. Limandri has a private law practice, and in 2002 he founded the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund to pay for his pro bono work on behalf of religious freedom.
American Legion v. American Humanist Association, 588 U.S. ___ (2019), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the separation of church and state related to maintaining the Peace Cross, a World War I memorial shaped after a Latin cross, on government-owned land, though initially built in 1925 with private funds on private lands. The case was a consolidation of two petitions to the court, that of The American Legion who built the cross, and of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission who own the land and maintain the memorial. Both petitions challenged the Fourth Circuit's ruling that, regardless of the secular purpose the cross was built for in honoring the deceased soldiers, the cross emboldened a religious symbol and had ordered it altered or razed. The Supreme Court reversed the Fourth Circuit's ruling in a 7–2 decision, determining that since the Cross had stood for decades without controversy, it did not violate the Establishment Clause and could remain standing.
Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held, 6–3, that the government, while following the Establishment Clause, may not suppress an individual from engaging in personal religious observance, as doing so would violate the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.
