On Friday, the top court in the state of Massachusetts has declared that the Pledge of Allegiance does not discriminate against atheists, and that the phrase "under God" represented a patriotic exercise. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts has considered the arguments lodged against the country's pledge, which was brought be an unidentified family of a student at a suburban Boston school.
According to the lawyers of the plaintiff, the pledge currently violate Equal Rights Amendment of the state Constitution, CNN reported. Moreover, the children who refused to recite the pledge due to their beliefs resulted in them getting ostracized. The plaintiff is seeking to eliminate the mention of God in the pledge in classroom recitals of the pledge.
The state court said that it has rejected the challenge on the basis that the pledge was voluntary and that the recital of the pledge, despite the word God in it, is not a religious exercise. Moreover, the state court also said the plaintiff has failed to prove that the pledge has resulted in discriminatory treatment. On the other hand, the court said that if there are future complaints about no reciting the pledge resulted to getting ostracized or bullied, the court is willing to consider a remedy under the equal rights amendment.
"The plaintiffs here did not successfully allege that their children receive negative treatment because they opt not to recite the words 'under God,' or that the inclusion of that phrase in the pledge has occasioned 'the creation of second-class citizens,'" the state court ruled.
Executive director Roy Speckhardt of the American Humanist Association, whose group had provided legal services to the plaintiffs in the case, dubbed the decision a setback. However, Speckhardt expressed that a similar case filed in New Jersey last week could win because the case would seek to show that the pledge engendered a climate of discrimination.
