A bunch of people e-mailed me to ask about this subject, so I blogged about it today at GlennReynolds.com, where I’ve been guest-blogging this week. An excerpt:
The House of Representatives just passed a bill that says: “No court created by Act of Congress shall have any jurisdiction, and the Supreme Court shall have no appellate jurisdiction, to hear or decide any question pertaining to the interpretation of, or the validity under the Constitution of, the Pledge of Allegiance . . . or its recitation.”
The theory, as I understand it, is to keep the federal courts from striking down the words “under God” in the Pledge. The Ninth Circuit federal court of appeals, of course, held in 2002 that the teacher-led recitation of those words in government-run schools violated the Establishment Clause, even when pupils were legally allowed to remain quiet if they preferred. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court set aside that decision, but on procedural grounds, without confronting the legal question.
The trouble is that the proposed law might have the perverse effect of jeopardizing the “under God” rather than preserving it. . . .
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