Appeals Court Upholds Lower Ruling: Penn. Pledge Law Unconstitutional
by Jim Brown
August 25, 2004
(AgapePress) - A Pennsylvania lawmaker who sponsored the state's Pledge of Allegiance law is expressing disappointment with a federal appeals court decision that declared the legislation unconstitutional.The act sponsored by state representative Alan Egolf would have required students to either recite the Pledge or sing the national anthem daily. The law allowed schools to opt out of the Pledge requirement for religious reasons. Student could also decline; but if they did, the law required parental notification.
However, a three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the threat of parental notification would coerce students into taking the Pledge and thus violate their free-speech rights. Egolf says the Third Circuit wrongly viewed parental notification as a form of punishment.
"And I think that's probably the most outrageous part of this," the lawmaker says, "because our liberal courts [are] apparently feeling it's unconstitutional for a school to notify parents about an aspect of their child's educational experience."
Egolf says the court had several misconceptions about the law. "One of those is that the notification of parents is a form of punishment -- and there was never any intent of punishment," he says. "We can go back and look at discussions on the House floor [and see that]."
In March, a U.S. district judge had nullified the Pledge law, saying it violated students' First Amendment rights of free expression and that the parental-notification requirement constituted "viewpoint discrimination." That judge also described it as an attempt to circumvent a decades-old Supreme Court ruling that banned mandatory Pledge recitations. Then, as now, Egolf maintained the law does not violate anyone's free-speech rights because it include the "opt out" alternative.
