Taking on the Pledge of Allegiance

Ronald Bishop

Description

Taking on the Pledge of Allegiance explores the landmark lawsuit filed by avowed atheist Michael Newdow against the Elk Grove Unified School District in California, in which he claimed the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance amounted to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Newdow's original suit was ignored by the public and the news media until June 26, 2002, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional. This decision touched off a firestorm of negative reaction, both from politicians and from the public. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually overturned the ruling on Flag Day 2004.

This book contains interviews with many of the parties involved, including Newdow and journalists who covered the case. Ronald Bishop examines how the news media marginalized Newdow after the Ninth Circuit's ruling—acting as a "guard dog" for the government and for the ideas supposedly at the ideological heart of America—by framing the decision as an aberration, a radical act by a hopelessly liberal federal circuit court. Bishop concludes that journalists relegated Newdow to a rhetorical "protest zone"—he was heard, but from a safe distance.
Foreword
Introduction

1. Master Myths, Frames, Narratives, and Guard Dogs

2. A Case of First Impression

3. An Impermissible Message of Endorsement

4. A Reputation for Unorthodox Opinions

5. Their Own Little World

6. The Good Mother

7. On to the Supreme Court

8. Tepid and Diluted

9. Nice Try, Young Man

10. We’re Saved—For Now

References
Index

Sujets

• Communication studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791479551
• Langue: English

Extrait

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Ronald Bishop Foreword by Nadine Strossen „ „ „ „ „ „ „

Taking on the Pledge of Allegiance

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Taking on the Pledge of Allegiance

The News Media and Michael Newdow’s Constitutional Challenge

Ronald Bishop

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2007 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Ryan Morris Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Bishop, Ronald, 1961– Taking on the Pledge of Allegiance : the news media and Michael Newdow’s Constitutional challenge / Ronald Bishop; foreword by Nadine Strossen p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7914-7181-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-7914-7182-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Newdow, Michael—Trials, litigation, etc. 2. Bellamy, Francis. Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. 3. Flags—Law and legislation—United States. 4. Religion in the public schools—Law and legislation—United States. I. Title.

KF228.N524B57 2007 342.7308'52—dc22

2006100311

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Master Myths, Frames, Narratives, and Guard Dogs 2 A Case of First Impression 3 An Impermissible Message of Endorsement 4 A Reputation for Unorthodox Opinions 5 Their Own Little World 6 The Good Mother 7 On to the Supreme Court 8 Tepid and Diluted 9 Nice Try, Young Man 10 We’re Saved—For Now References Index

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Foreword

Ron Bishop’s valuable book documents in detail the media’s inaccurate and unfair coverage of Michael Newdow’s important constitutional liti- gation concerning two fundamental sets of rights that the Supreme Court long has protected: first, parents’ rights to make basic decisions about the education and upbringing of their own children—in particular, their chil- 1 dren’s moral and religious education—free from government coercion; and second, the right of all individuals, including public school students, to be free from government pressure—even subtle and indirect pressure— 2 to affirm religious beliefs. Specifically, Newdow asserted a quite limited, although undeniably important, claim. He challenged the “pledge policy” at his daughter’s public school, which required that teachers daily lead the students in “pledg[ing] allegiance to . . . one nationunder God.” Newdow main- tained that this policy violated his parental right to influence his young daughter’s religious beliefs, and also violated the individual freedom of re- ligion and conscience that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause 3 protects from government pressure. Contrary to pervasive media exaggerations about the scope of New- dow’s litigation, which Bishop chronicles, Newdow didnotchallenge the re- quirement that students recite the Pledge in its original form, before the 1954 federal law added the words “under God” expressly to counter “Godless Communism” during the Cold War. Nor did Newdow challenge the recita- tion of these added words in any context other than public school class- rooms, and he certainly did not seek to strip all religious references from public life, notwithstanding the widespread, overblown media accounts that mischaracterized his claims in these ways, which Bishop discusses.

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Foreword

The media’s manifold distortions of Newdow’s significant case in- cluded the failure to acknowledge that what he was seeking, above all, was to protect his cherished parental relationship with his beloved daugh- ter. In the face of the limitations that the family law system had imposed on his relationship with his daughter, as a result of his custody battles with her mother, Newdow was fighting to maintain that relationship as fully as possible, including the core element of that relationship that the Supreme Court had repeatedly recognized: parents’ rights to instill their own moral or religious values in their own children, rather than permit- ting government schools to proscribe or prescribe particular religious beliefs for all children. Far from lauding Newdow’s devotion to his daughter, and his de- termination to maintain a meaningful relationship with her, to the con- trary, the media tended to demonize him as an egocentric individualist who was taking advantage of his biological relationship with his daugh- ter to advance his own ideological agenda. It is especially ironic that Newdow was most harshly assailed by spokespeople for the religious and political right—who, as Bishop shows, were disproportionately repre- sented in the media coverage—given Newdow’s paramount commitment to aims that they also espouse: reducing government power to intervene in family relationships, and, in particular, reducing the power of govern- ment schools to impose on children majoritarian values concerning reli- gious beliefs that conflict with their parents’ beliefs. Even judges, including Supreme Court justices, who rejected New- dow’s religious liberty claim, did agree with his central contention that “he has a right to expose his daughter to [his] views [about religion] with- 4 out the State’s placing itsimprimaturon a particular religion.” These judges rejected his religious freedom claim essentially on factual—rather than legal or principled—grounds, since they viewed the pledge as “a pa- 5 triotic exercise, not a religious one.” In short, had these judges viewed the Pledge as a religious exercise, they apparently would have upheld Newdow’s claim. Moreover, many legal, historical, and religious experts did fully endorse Newdow’s claim that public schools may not require students to recite the words “under God” in the Pledge. This substantial support for Newdow’s legal claims, including from ideologically diverse judges and other experts, was another essential as- pect of his case that the media coverage badly distorted. As Bishop docu- ments, the media generally disparaged and trivialized Newdow’s legal claims, implying that they had garnered the support of only a few judges on an allegedly—but not actually—extremist liberal court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Foreword

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Consider just a few of the many facts that the media coverage ob- scured, but which underscore the serious merits of Newdow’s religious liberty claims, and their broad support among ideologically and reli- giously diverse experts:

The Ninth Circuit judge who authored the much maligned opinion upholding Newdow’s claim, Alfred Goodwin,isa Republican, who had been appointed to the court by a conservative Republican president, Richard Nixon. The many “friend of the court” briefs that were filed in the Supreme Court supporting Newdow’s contentions included briefs submitted by leading historians, legal scholars, reli- gious scholars, theologians, religious organizations, and individual religious leaders. Of the three Supreme Court justices who addressed the 6 merits of Newdow’s claims, one “conclude[d] that,as a matter of our precedent, the Pledge policy is unconstitu- 7 tional.that justice can hardly be dismissed—” Notably, as so many members of the media attempted to dismiss the Ninth Circuit judges who had ruled in Newdow’s favor— as an extreme liberal; it was none other than Clarence Thomas, the conservative Republican who had been appointed by Republican president George H. W. Bush!

Despite Justice Thomas’s expressed disagreement with the Court’s pertinent Establishment Clause precedents, to his great credit, he carefully examined these precedents and candidly concluded that their reasoning rendered the challenged Pledge policy even more clearly unconstitutional than other practices the Court had previously struck down, including school-sponsored prayer at graduation ceremonies. As Justice Thomas explained, in part:

A prayer at graduation is a one-time event, the graduating stu- dents are almost (if not already) adults, and their parents are usually present. By contrast, very young students, removed from the protection of their parents, are exposed to the Pledge each and every day. Moreover, . . . although students may feel “peer pressure” to attend their graduations, the pressure here is far less sub- tle: Students are actually compelled (that is, by law . . .) to 8 attend school. . . .