First-Grader Punished for Refusing to Say Pledge of Allegiance, Lawsuit Says

[Guest Nicole]

Indiana woman Jamie Porter claimed her first-grader son was punished for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance. Now she is suing the teacher and principal allegedly responsible.

The complaint, obtained by Fox 59, said the incident happened in March. Fuqua Elementary School teacher Kelly McFarland allegedly sent the boy to the principal’s office because he stayed seated during the pledge. Asked why he didn’t recite it, he said that “he was doing it to protest the government of the United States, as it was racist, greedy and does not care about people,” the lawsuit stated.

Later, Principal Mary Beth Harris‘ office allegedly made him practice reciting the pledge. He and his mother now seek damages after he disliked the way school officials treated him. He was also still mourning after his father recently passed away, the lawsuit said.

LawNewz.com reached out to McFarland and Harris for comment, and will update when they respond. The Vigo County School Corporation, a public school district, has not been sued.

Case law on this sort of allegation remains very clear: officials cannot make students say the pledge. Doing so violates kids’ First Amendment rights.

This dates back to the 1943 Supreme Court case West Virginia v. Barnette. They voted 6-3 on behalf of several students, all of whom were Jehovah’s Witnesses refusing to stand for the pledge on religious grounds. Justice Robert H. Jackson said the government, including school officials, couldn’t force people to say things they don’t mean:

To sustain the compulsory flag salute, we are required to say that a Bill of Rights which guards the individual’s right to speak his own mind left it open to public authorities to compel him to utter what is not in his mind.

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/first-grader-punished-for-refusing-to-say-pledge-of-allegiance-lawsuit-says/

[David Normand]

It is an interesting opinion (Burnett 1943). Totally different from the 1940 decision when Felix Frankfurter was Associate Justice. Writing for the majority he felt that failure to compel students to recite the pledge would reduce loyalty to the nation. In the 1943 Burnett case, which effectively reversed the 1940 Gobitis  decision, Jackson mentioned in the opinion that merely reciting the pledge did not make a person loyal. Further, Jackson stated that compelling people to recite the pledge against their will could actually drive them further against the government. 

It is interesting to me that over the 200 plus years that this country has been a nation most if not all people who have been convicted of treason were people who not only recited the pledge of allegiance that grade school kids are familiar with, but also usually were members of government in some capacity who also took an oath of their office that further codified their allegiance, duties, and responsibilities to this country. Just  reiterating the point that merely reciting a pledge of loyalty to a particular country does not make one a loyal citizen.