For more than 80 years, the law has been clear. The government can’t force public school children to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
One Tennessee school was either oblivious to this settled First Amendment principle or chose to ignore it. But thanks to a letter from FIRE, the school district has stepped in and promised to investigate.
Last month, FIRE wrote to the principal of Meadowview Middle School (part of the Hamblen County school district in eastern Tennessee) and the superintendent of the district after receiving reports that the principal had threatened — and actually followed through on — issuing demerits to students who refused to stand for the pledge. Principal Timothy Landefeld allegedly let students sit for religious reasons but not political ones. In this case, students could not sit in protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the community.
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Demerits aren’t trivial. Accumulating seven could land a student in 30 days of alternative school — a threshold easily reached in less than two weeks if a student protests every day. Even fewer demerits could carry serious consequences, such as removal from school clubs. All for exercising clearly established constitutional rights.
FIRE’s letter called on Meadowview officials to immediately and publicly end this practice and rescind all related disciplinary actions. In response to our letter, legal counsel for the Hamblen County Board of Education promised the district was looking into the matter, assured FIRE that district policy allows students to opt out of the pledge, said any related demerits would be reversed, and said the superintendent would remind the district’s principals of the opt-out policy at an upcoming meeting.
“The First Amendment does not yield to the discomfort or hostility of onlookers.”
We’re gratified that the district is taking our concerns and its constitutional obligations seriously. While school districts have broad discretion to establish curriculum and prohibit expression that’s truly disruptive to the learning environment, that doesn’t mean students “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” Those rights include not just the right to speak but the right not to speak, including the right to refuse to pledge allegiance to the flag or any other symbol.
In 1943, the Supreme Court conclusively ruled on the issue in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. Even in the midst of World War II, the Court invalidated a requirement that schoolchildren salute the flag and recite the pledge. As FIRE told Meadowview Middle School:
The Court recognized that coercing expressions of reverence for national symbols is incompatible with our country’s commitment to individual liberty. As the Court famously declared, “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.”
That protection extends not only to refusing to salute the flag or recite the pledge, but also to declining to stand for it at all. Like a flag salute, standing for the pledge is a symbolic gesture that cannot be compelled. In fact, sitting silently to protest ICE is doubly protected — both as a refusal to endorse the government’s message and as a non-disruptive expression of a different message.
By allowing only a religious opt-out, Meadowview officials both unconstitutionally compelled speech and discriminated based on viewpoint, which the Supreme Court has called an “egregious” form of censorship. In Barnette, the students objected to saluting the flag on religious grounds, but it doesn’t matter whether a student’s decision is for religious or political reasons. Courts have consistently upheld students’ right not to take the pledge for political reasons. That’s because all Americans have the right not to affirm a government message, full stop. This is a basic First Amendment principle that doesn’t turn on one’s reason why.
Forcing students . . . to profess allegiance ironically violates the very principles of freedom of conscience and individual liberty that the flag itself represents.
Meadowview officials may be offended by the students’ reasons for sitting, and they may be upset by what they see as disrespect toward a revered national symbol. But, as we told the school, “the First Amendment does not yield to the discomfort or hostility of onlookers.” Meadowview may not punish students out of “a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”
America’s public schools partly exist to help turn students into engaged citizens, and school officials are free to model respect for national symbols. But compelled loyalty rings hollow. Forcing students, under threat of punishment, to profess allegiance ironically violates the very principles of freedom of conscience and individual liberty that the flag itself represents.
FIRE applauds the Hamblen County school district for taking swift action to address this issue. We encourage district officials to not only remind school principals of their constitutional requirements, but to ask that individual school officials, especially at Meadowview, proactively notify students and parents that students are free to exercise their First Amendment rights when it comes to pledging allegiance to the flag “and the liberty for which it stands.” FIRE will continue watching to ensure students’ rights are secure.
