A letter to the South Dakota House of Representatives
Dear Representatives,
During the House State Affairs Committee meeting on February 19, 2014, there was a suggestion from Representative Wick that the ACLU supported a bill in Oregon which HB 1150 has been modeled after. It should be noted that the ACLU of Oregon in 1999 was neutral on the bill and subsequently opposed amendments to the law. In 2005 and again in 2011 when the ACLU testified against amendments, it made it clear that it opposed the underlying law for a variety of reasons including religious freedom.
Accordingly, please note that the ACLU of South Dakota opposes HB 1150. Passage of this bill will greatly expand the mandatory recitation of the Pledge and will further ostracize students and their families who feel they must refrain from participating in the Pledge because of their religious and/or political beliefs.
For most of this nations history, the Pledge originally did not include God. It states:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands; one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
It was only in 1954, in the midst of the McCarthy era red scare period that Congress added Under God. The hallmark of the McCarthy era was its pressure to conform in politics and religion, in speech and belief. The prevailing assumption was that all good (non-communist) Americans believed in a monotheistic God. Untrue in the 1950s, this assumption is more strikingly untrue today. Many Americans subscribe to no religion. And even people who do worship a monotheistic God show great variation in their definition of the deity; many do not subscribe to the idea that Gods role is to organize the affairs of humans and countries, as embodied in the phrase one nation under God.
If the goal of this law is patriotism, then we should choose a non-religious expression of patriotism, such as the pre-1954 Pledge. Choosing to include the words under God indicates that the real purpose of the Pledge, here, is religious, not patriotic.
The law requires a child to maintain a respectful silence during the salute.
The right to express oneself by not participating in the pledge includes the right to remain seated while others stand. The famous case of Tinker v. Des Moines School Dist., 393 US 503 (1969) upheld the rights of students to silently protest by wearing black armbands. Remaining seated during the pledge is a form of silent expression just like the black armbands in Tinker.
The practical result of this law will be to ostracize students who cannot or choose not to participate in the pledge for whatever reasons they or their parents decide. It is callous for the government to force schoolchildren of minority faiths to isolate themselves from their classmates to avoid participating in a religious exercise in violation of their conscience. And under this proposal, children will be forced daily to set themselves apart from their peers. This is just the type of difference that other children quickly pick up on and use to bully and harass the lone child who is now marked as different, and bad from the majority of other students in that school. For the last few years, we have become increasingly aware of the devastating effects that bullying has, especially on children who are isolated from their peers because of real or perceived differences. Now is not the time to add to this.
The ACLU of South Dakota strongly opposes HB 1150.
Sincerely,
Heather Smith
Executive Director
ACLU of South Dakota
