Jun 2, 2006
On June 1, 2006, the Becket Fund filed its opening brief before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in an effort to overturn the September 2005 trial court decision that struck down daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance because it includes the two words "under God."
The Becket Fund represents actual parties to the lawsuit as Defendant-Intervenors -- children who attend the targeted public schools and who want to keep saying the Pledge of Allegiance complete with the words “under God”; the parents of those children; and the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal organization that spearheaded the effort to add "under God" to the Pledge 52 years ago.
The Becket Fund's brief explains that the two words “under God” in the Pledge encapsulate a foundational idea in American political philosophy: that the rights of the human person are inalienable -- and that the power of the state is correspondingly limited -- precisely because those rights exist prior to the state and come from a source beyond it.
The brief then explains in detail how this very same concept of inalienable rights and limited government is reflected throughout American history, starting with the affirmation in the Declaration of Independence that people are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," and continuing with consistent affirmations of the same concept from all three branches of government since the Founding.
The brief also traces the history of the particular phrase "under God" as a way to declare limits on the power of the state, beginning with legal scholars from the Middle Ages, followed by George Washington rallying the troops on the eve of the Founding, through Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
"In this context," the brief concludes, "to declare that the Constitution somehow forbids the government from espousing this concept of limited government and inalienable rights – the very concept that the Constitution and Bill of Rights exist to secure – would be at once revolutionary and absurd."
Opening briefs of the other Defendants (the Rio Linda Union School District and the United States) were also filed on June 1. Numerous briefs of amici curiae in support of The Becket Fund's position are expected to be filed within a week. Newdow's opposition brief is due in early July. The Becket Fund's reply brief is due two weeks after that.
The case is now called RoeChild-2 v. Carey, No. 05-17257.