Wednesday, September 14, 2005

"Under God" is unconstitutional in Sacramento, again

The Supreme Court left the door open for Michael Newdow to bring his case again, since they threw out his case on the basis of his lack of standing (he is not the legal guardian of his daughter) and refused to address the specifics of his case. The District Court rightly relied on the precedent of the 9th Circuit's previous ruling in his case, and entered an injunction against Elk Grove schools to prohibit the use of the "under God" language. Newdow refiled the case including two additional families as plaintiffs, where there's no issue of standing to allow the case to be thrown out on a similar technicality this time.

This will go back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will most likely rule the same way (thus making "under God" unconstitutional throughout the 9th Circuit), then get appealed again to the U.S. Supreme Court, where we will find out what John G. Roberts really meant when he said (near the end of Day 2 of his confirmation hearings) that he believes that the First Amendment protects the rights of nonbelievers as well as one religious sect against another (unlike Scalia, who said in his dissent in McCreary that government can endorse belief over nonbelief):

DURBIN: Let me just wrap this up by asking -- I think you've alluded to this -- is it your belief that what we are trying to establish in the constitutional protection on the exercise of religion is not only to protect minorities, religious minorities, but also nonbelievers?

ROBERTS: Yes.

The court's decisions in that area are quite clear.

And I think the framers' intent was as well; that it was not their intent just to have a protection for denominational discrimination. It was their intent to leave this as an area of privacy apart -- a conscience from which the government would not intrude.

1 comment:

Einzige said...

Two things strike me about all this hot air:

1) Doesn't the God of Abraham declare at some point that he doesn't like idolatry? Isn't that what pledging allegiance to a flag amounts to?

2) I wish people who are supposedly in favor of less government and more freedom wouldn't get so worked up about a thing that, at its core, strikes me as the very antithesis of those things. The damned thing was written by a hardcore socialist, for crying out loud! That real freedom is not on the agenda of the Hannities and the Limbaughs of the world is never clearer than in cases like these.