PENNSYLVANIA Group vows fight over pledge ruling

More than two dozen states let students opt out if they are respectful.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Supporters of a Pennsylvania law requiring schoolchildren to either recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem -- or risk the potential wrath of their parents -- are vowing to fight a federal judge's finding that the law is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Robert F. Kelly said Tuesday that though the law allows students to opt out of the pledge, it also contains a penalty for doing so: The school district informs the student's parents. Kelly said the threat of parental notification would coerce students into taking the pledge, and thereby violate their right to free speech.
Attorney General Mike Fisher plans to appeal the decision, his office said.
"We feel that this act does not violate a student's constitutional rights because a student can decline to participate because of personal or religious beliefs," Fisher's spokesman, Sean Connolly, said.
The law's original sponsor, state Rep. Allan Egolf, R-Perry, said the court's decision would prevent parents from having a role in their children's civic education.
"The judge seems to think that kids need to be protected from their parents," Egolf said. "I think he is way off-base."
What other states do
The ruling affects only Pennsylvania, but it raises questions about practices in several states that require students to get permission from a parent before opting out of the pledge.
Colorado and Utah both passed laws this spring requiring students to recite the pledge unless they can produce a written note from their parents. Tennessee passed a similar law last year.
More than two dozen other states have laws that require schools to offer the pledge but allow students to opt out as long as they maintain a respectful silence.
In Pennsylvania the law was challenged by several private schools where students and parents had objected to the pledge's being mandatory. Andrew Esser-Haines, 17, who graduated this spring from the Upattinas School and Resource Center, one of the plaintiffs, said forcing students to say the pledge undermines its effectiveness.
"If a student is forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, they may lose the interest in what it actually is," he said.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette, the case that decided that students -- and specifically the children of a Jehovah's Witness -- couldn't be compelled to recite the pledge.
"If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein," Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the landmark decision.
The court, however, allowed schools to continue leading students in the pledge on a voluntary basis, and people have argued ever since over how far states can go to encourage students to recite it before their actions become coercive.