RICHMOND, VA. — A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court ruling that the recitation of “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance by Virginia schoolchildren is constitutional.
“The Pledge, which is not a religious exercise, … does not amount to an establishment of religion,” wrote Judge Karen J. Williams in the Aug. 10 opinion of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “Accordingly, the Recitation Statute, requiring daily, voluntary recitation of the Pledge in the classrooms of Virginia’s public schools, is constitutional.”
Edward Myers, a Loudoun County, Va., man affiliated with the Anabaptist-Mennonite faith, sued the Loudoun County Public Schools in 2002, claiming that the recitation of the pledge violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. He had two children in the district’s schools at the time and said he was concerned that the county was indoctrinating them with a “‘God and Country’ religious worldview.”
Williams affirmed the lower court’s decision in her ruling, saying the pledge is a patriotic activity rather than a religious one.
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