Barnette that students couldn't be forced to salute the US flag or say the pledge because doing so would violate their First Amendment rights.
The case ended up with the high court after West Virginia's state Board of Education passed a resolution in requiring students and teachers to salute the flag. A group of Jehovah's Witnesses sued, saying the requirement went against their religious beliefs.
Legal challenges involving the Pledge of Allegiance continue to pop up from time to time, with more recent cases centering on humanists or religious freedom groups trying to eliminate the phrase "under God" from the pledge, according to the National Constitution Center.
That phrase wasn't added to the pledge until , during the Cold War, when members of Congress reportedly wanted to emphasize differences between the US and the atheistic Soviet Union. Two recent legal challenges also targeted state constitutions, and not the U. In , the Massachusetts case Jane Doe v. Acton-Boxborough Regional School District involved a group of parents, teachers and the American Humanist Association in an action against a school district.
In February , a judge ruled in favor of the school district. An event in drew attention to the ability of states to require students at public schools to get parental permission before opting out of the pledge, when a sixth-grade student was arrested in a pledge dispute.
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