Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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Rob
Sherman Advocacy
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"Fighting injustice, one victory at a time."
All-star First Amendment activist Michael Newdow is fighting to preserve his United States Court of Appeals victory, in which the appellate court courageously and correctly recognized that the inclusion of the words, "under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance indisputably constitutes an act by the federal government to use the Pledge as a weapon for proselytizing in favor of religious belief and against atheism. Last week, Newdow filed a major brief in his battle to sustain our nation's victory over religious fanatics.
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The radical mainstream has co-opted the Pledge of Allegiance into a tool for indoctrinating children in superstition. (God is supposedly a supernatural entity. People who believe that there is a supernatural entity are, by definition, superstitious). The First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits government from advancing religion. Until the Pledge decision by the Ninth Circuit earlier this year, that hadn't stopped the government from doing it with the Pledge.
Many people wonder why the ruling of the Ninth Circuit federal appeals court in California appears to be in conflict with the ruling in my Pledge case from 1992 at the Seventh Circuit federal appeals court in Chicago.
In that particular litigation, I did not challenge the inclusion of the phrase, "under God," in the Pledge of Allegiance. That litigation was strictly a challenge to the Illinois law which requires my atheist children to say, at the beginning of each school day, that there is a god. I didn't seek to stop other children from saying the Pledge. All I wanted was an exemption from the requirement for the many children who realize that God is make-believe. I merely sought to invalidate the mandatory requirement that my child say that there is a god every school day.
Sounds reasonable, doesn't it?
The Illinois Compiled Statutes, at Chapter 105, Section 27-3, Paragraph 3, states, "The Pledge of Allegiance shall be recited each school day by pupils in elementary and secondary educational institutions supported or maintained in whole or in part by public funds." It should be noted that, in 1992, the students that the law applied to were the ones in public elementary schools. The law was amended this year to provide that the law also applies to students who attend public high schools.
In my lawsuit, I contended that, in a country where the constitution guarantees freedom of speech, it is unconstitutional to have a law that provides for mandatory speech. Additionally, I contended that, in a country where the constitution guarantees religious freedom, it is unconstitutional to have a law that requires children to renounce the opinion about religion which is taught at home and profess the opposite opinion when they attend classes at the local public school.
In the court's opinion, at Roman Numeral Three, Paragraph One, Sentence Two, the court said, "Plaintiff's contend that the language of the law is unambiguous and compulsory." In the same section, at Paragraph Three, Sentence Seven, the court said, "If it means all pupils, then the law is blatantly unconstitutional."
In order to save the law, the Seventh Circuit engaged in a legal trick known as "denying the obvious." In that same paragraph, at Sentence Six, the Seventh Circuit asserted that the the law did not state which pupils the law applied to. That assertion, however, was preposterous. The law was very specific in stating precisely which pupils that the law applied to. The law didn't apply to pupils in private schools, parochial schools, home schools or even, at the time, public high schools. Rather, the law very clearly and unambiguously stated that the pupils to whom the law applied to were "pupils in elementary educational institutions supported or maintained in whole or in part by public funds." Those pupils. The ones who attended public elementary schools.
The Seventh Circuit then made the bizarre statement, in Sentence Ten of that same paragraph, that as long as some students go along with saying the Pledge (and in so doing agree to having their free speech and freedom of religion rights violated), then other students, such as the Sherman children, are excused from having to do it (and being subject to having their rights violated).
Apparently, according to the Seventh Circuit, if the Shermans don't like a particular law, they are free to disregard it if, and only if, there are others who are willing to abide by the provisions of the statute. The Illinois Pledge law is constitutional because laws are merely suggestions, not requirements.
Then, in the most farfetched assertion by the Seventh Circuit in this decision, the Court stated, in Sentence Eleven of the same paragraph, that the statute provides that, "Leading the Pledge [by the teacher] is not optional, but participating [by the pupil] is. This makes sense."
Really? Where does the statute say anything about the teacher being required to lead the Pledge? It doesn't. Teachers aren't even mentioned in the statute. There is absolutely no requirement in the statute for teachers to do anything other than to make sure that the pupils say it. As far as the statute is concerned, teachers can just sit back, relax and tell the students, "Children, say the Pledge." Teachers could, as far as the statute is concerned, merely hand out printed copies of the Pledge and direct that the children stand up and read it. The statute says nothing about teachers being required to say it, too, or to lead it, for that matter. The Seventh Circuit was simply making it up. They were inventing fictitious provisions for the statute in order to save it.
Where does the statute say, as the Seventh Circuit contends in Sentence Eleven, that participation by pupils is voluntary? It doesn't. It says that the Pledge "shall be recited" by pupils, not that they may recite it if they feel like it.
The Ninth Circuit has repudiated the ludicrous findings of the Seventh Circuit. Hopefully, they will continue to support the Constitution and make permanent their decision to stop the government from using the Pledge of Allegiance as a weapon for proselytizing in favor of religion and against atheism. Then, hopefully, the Supreme Court of the United States will sustain this quintessentially patriotic decision.
Rob Sherman P. O. Box
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Buffalo Grove, IL 60089-7410
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Telephone: (847) 870-0700
Fax: (847) 870-1156
E-mail: rob followed by the at symbol followed by robsherman dot com