An eighth-grader in Carlisle, Pennsylvania says that she went to see the school nurse two weeks ago–only to have the nurse turn her away because because she refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Now the American Humanist Association is on the case.
The girl, a student at Wilson Middle School, happened to be in the nurse’s office when the Pledge of Allegiance was read over the intercom. Everyone in the room stood up, hand over heart–except the girl. According to a letter the AHA’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center sent to the Carlisle Area School District, the nurse yelled at her, “Why didn’t you stand for the Pledge?” When the girl replied she had the right not to participate, the nurse screamed, “Fine! Then leave! I have the right to not service you!”
The girl then ran out of the office in tears to call her mother. As she was about to make the call from an office, the nurse poked her head in the door and snapped, “She isn’t calling a parent until I have a long conversation with her!” A guidance counselor later took the girl into her office, and told her that if she didn’t want to participate in the Pledge, under district policy she had to stand in the hallway until it was over. However, according to WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, district policy only requires that students who don’t want to take part in the Pledge respect the rights of students who do participate.
This girl and her parents didn’t take this egregious First Amendment violation lying down. They alerted the AHA, which runs Boycott the Pledge, a website that calls for students to not take part in the Pledge until the words “under God” are removed. For those who don’t know, “under God” was not part of the original Pledge, but those words were added in 1954. More than a decade earlier, in 1943, the Supreme Court held in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that students can’t be forced to take part in the Pledge. Since then, federal courts have ruled time and again that students can’t be forced to leave the room during the Pledge, either.
AHA legal director David Niose told The (Carlisle) Sentinel that despite this, his team gets roughly one complaint a week from a student who has been either disciplined or harassed by teachers or administrators for not taking part in the Pledge. He added that there is a misconception that taking part in the Pledge is an act of patriotism while sitting out shows a lack of patriotism. Nonetheless, he said, most complaints usually get resolved without legal action once administrators and district officials see that the right to sit out of the Pledge is unambiguous.
Niose doesn’t think this will go any differently, especially since the AHA isn’t asking for much. It wants the district to ensure that if students refuse to stand during the Pledge, they can do so without fear of discipline or humiliation. It also wants a written apology to the student. District officials say that they are investigating the matter, but can’t say much about it due to federal student privacy laws.
If it were up to me, the school nurse would be required to personally apologize to that girl–while the nurse is on her way out the door. It would be one thing if she simply berated her for not taking part in the Pledge. But refusing to treat her as well? That’s a firing offense–or at least it would be in any district that didn’t have its collective head up its collective rear end.
