Letter urges School Board to change policy at meeting on January 10.
The ACLU of Virginia today asked members of the Spotsylvania County School Board to fix a policy requiring students to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
The ACLU wants the new policy to make it clear that Spotsylvania public school students have a right both not to utter the Pledge and to refuse to stand during recitations. Supervisors gave initial approval for such a policy in December, but must confirm that vote on Tuesday for the policy to take effect.
The matter came to a head recently when a student at Ni River Middle School was told he must stand for the Pledge or be in violation of a 2002 policy requiring all Spotsylvania students to stand and place their right hand over their hearts during the daily recitation of the Pledge.
Although the Spotsylvania policy does not oblige students to recite the Pledge, its requirement that students’ stand violates the First Amendment right to free speech and state law. The Virginia law, passed in 2002, evolved from a bill introduced by Senator Warren E. Barry that originally required students to stand and recite the Pledge unless they could articulate a religious objection and provide proof of their religious beliefs.
But by the end of the 2002 session, after both the ACLU and the Attorney General’s office expressed opposition to the bill, lawmakers approved a law that instituted mandatory daily recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance in all Virginia public schools, but explicitly affirmed the right of students to refuse to say the Pledge or to stand for it.
“Not standing for the Pledge won’t win any school popularity contests,” said ACLU of Virginia executive director Kent Willis, “but the same constitutional principle that protects this kind of expression also protects our right to possess and espouse the religious and political beliefs of your choice. I don’t think anyone wants to change that.”
“The right to refuse to stand for or recite the Pledge is about as fundamental as it gets in a free society,” added Willis. “Free speech not only means that the government can’t suppress your beliefs, but also that it cannot compel you to profess a belief you do not have.”
Willis’s letter to members of the Spotsylvania School Board can be found here. A legal memo from ACLU of Virginia legal director Rebecca Glenberg is available by contacting the ACLU of Virginia.
Contact: Kent Willis, Executive Director, ACLU of Virginia, 804-644-8022
