Minersville School District v. Gobitis

Minersville School District v. Gobitis
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 25, 1940 Decided June 3, 1940
Full case name	Minersville School District, Board of Education of Minersville School District, et al. v. Walter Gobitis, et al.
Citations	310 U.S. 586 (more) 60 S. Ct. 1010; 84 L. Ed. 1375; 1940 U.S. LEXIS 1136; 17 Ohio Op. 417; 127 A.L.R. 1493
Case history
Prior	Judgment for plaintiffs, injunction granted, 24 F. Supp. 271 (E.D. Pa. 1938); affirmed, 108 F.2d 683 (3d Cir. 1939); certiorari granted, 309 U.S. 645 (1940)
Subsequent	None
Holding
The First Amendment does not require States to excuse public school students from saluting the American flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance on religious grounds. Third Circuit reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice Charles E. Hughes Associate Justices James C. McReynolds · Harlan F. Stone Owen Roberts · Hugo Black Stanley F. Reed · Felix Frankfurter William O. Douglas · Frank Murphy
Case opinions
Majority	Frankfurter, joined by Roberts, Black, Reed, Douglas, Murphy
Concurrence	McReynolds
Dissent	Stone
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. I
Overruled by
West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)

Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586 (1940), was a U.S. Supreme Court case involving a Jehovah's Witness named Gobitas (note the misspelling), in which the court had held that Witnesses could be forced against their will to salute the flag. This decision led to increased persecution of Witnesses in the United States.

Background

Mandatory flag pledges in public schools were motivated by patriotic fervor in wartime America. The first known mandatory flag pledges were instituted in a number of states during the Spanish-American war. During World War I, many more states instituted mandatory flag pledges with only a few dissents recorded by the ACLU. It wasn't until World War II was drawing close that the practice was challenged directly in a way that rose through the court system.

In 1935, the Jehovah's Witnesses pronounced a doctrine that declared saluting the flag to be a form of idolatry. According to their beliefs, the Bible forbids having any false idols before God; and since, in their view, all human governments are ultimately instituted by Satan, pledging to them or their symbols would be a sin.

In 1935 in Lynn, Massachusetts, a third-grader and Jehovah’s Witness Carleton Nichols refused to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and was expelled from school. This incident received widespread media attention, and other Witness students soon followed suit. Watchtower Society President J.F. Rutherford gave a radio address praising Nichols, and schools around the country began expelling Witness students and firing Witness teachers. Witnesses hired teachers and set up “Kingdom schools” to continue their children’s education.

Minersville was 90% Roman Catholic and there was significant animosity towards the Jehovah's Witnesses. Tensions were already high before this case arose and many viewed this as one way to get back at the troublesome Witnesses.

Facts of the case

Walter Gobitas was a recent convert to the Jehovah's Witnesses. The national leadership had recently decided to make an issue of the forced pledges and asked people to stand up for their right to religious freedom. Those who heeded this call and challenged the practice of pledging the flag were accused of working with or being duped by German sympathizers. These charges were ironic because, at the time, many Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany were being persecuted for refusing to pledge allegiance to Hitler. A further irony lay in the fact that, at the time, many flag pledges were performed not with the right hand over the heart as they are today, but instead with an outstretched right hand, a gesture which has now become associated with the "Sieg Heil" salute of the Nazis.

Gobitis was inspired by stories of other Jehovah's Witnesses who challenged the system and suffered for it, and decided to make a stand himself and instructed his children not to pledge allegiance when at school.

As a result, the children were subjected to teasing, taunting, and attacks from the other kids. For Lillian, this meant giving up her status as class president and losing most of her friends. "When I'd come to school," she said, "they would throw a hail of pebbles and yell things like, 'Here comes Jehovah!' William's fifth grade teacher attempted to physically force his arm out of his pocket to make the requisite salute.

A local Catholic church started a boycott of the family store and its business dropped off. Because of their eventual expulsion, their father had to pay for them to enroll in a private school, resulting in even more economic hardship.

At first the school board was in a quandary because the law did not provide penalties for those who refused to pledge. Finally, though, the school board got permission to punish the Gobitas children expelled them, without appeal.

In the initial court proceedings, school superintendent Roudabush displayed contempt for the beliefs of the children, stating that he felt they had been "indoctrinated" and that the existence of even a few dissenters would be "demoralizing," leading to widespread disregard for the flag and American values.

Prior history

Despite two stinging lower-court losses, the school chose to take its case to the Supreme Court, making essentially the same arguments which had failed before.

Decision of the Court

In an 8-to-1 decision, the Court declined to make itself "the school board for the country" and upheld the mandatory flag salute. The Court held that the state's interest in "national cohesion" was "inferior to none in the hierarchy of legal values" and that national unity was "the basis of national security." The flag, the Court found, was an important symbol of national unity and could be a part of legislative initiatives designed "to promote in the minds of children who attend the common schools an attachment to the institutions of their country." (last visited Thursday, October 25, 2007).

Justice Frankfurter wrote the majority decision finding that the school district's interest in creating national unity was enough to allow them to require students to salute the flag. According to Frankfurter, the nation needed loyalty and the unity of all the people. Since saluting the flag was a primary means of achieving this legitimate goal, an issue of national importance was at stake.

"Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs," Frankfurter wrote.

Frankfurter further wrote that the recitation of a pledge advanced the cause of patriotism in the United States. He said the country's foundation as a free society depends upon building sentimental ties.

"We are dealing with an interest inferior to none in the hierarchy of legal values," Frankfurter wrote. "National unity is the basis of national security. To deny the legislature the right to select appropriate means for its attainment presents a totally different order of problem from that of the propriety of subordinating the possible ugliness of littered streets to the free expression opinion through handbills.

Minority opinion

Harlan Stone, the lone dissenter from the majority's decision wrote:

The guarantees of civil liberty are but guarantees of freedom of the human mind and spirit and of reasonable freedom and opportunity to express them...The very essence of the liberty which they guarantee is the freedom of the individual from compulsion as to what he shall think and what he shall say...

Aftermath

Reaction to the decision

On June 9th, a mob of 2,500 burned the Kingdom Hall in Kennebunkport, Maine. On June 16th, Litchfield, Illinois police jailed all of that town's sixty Witnesses, ostensibly protecting them from their neighbors. On June 18th, townspeople in Rawlins, Wyoming brutally beat five Witnesses; on the 22nd, the people of Parco, Wyoming tarred and feathered another.

American Legion posts harassed Witnesses nationwide. For example, on June 27th, members of the American Legion forced Witnesses from a trailer camp in Jackson, Mississippi and escorted them across state lines to Louisiana, where they were "...passed from county to county, finally winding up in the vicinity of Dallas, Texas." A Nebraska Witness was castrated. Little Rock Witnesses were beaten with pipes and screwdrivers. West Virginia Witnesses were forced to drink castor oil and then tied together with police department rope. Witnesses were jailed for sedition, jailed for distributing literature, jailed for holding a parade, jailed for canvassing without a license.

The American Civil Liberties Union reported to the Justice Department that nearly 1,500 Witnesses were physically attacked in more than 300 communities nationwide. One Southern sheriff told a reporter why Witnesses were being run out of town: "They're traitors; the Supreme Court says so. Ain't you heard?"

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt appealed publicly for calm, while newspaper editorials and the American legal community condemned the Gobitas decision as a blow to liberty. Several justices signaled their belief that the case had been “wrongly decided.”

The Court reconsiders

Partly because of this violent reaction to its decision, the Supreme Court reversed itself a few years later. On 14 June 1943 (Flag Day), the court handed down West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette. Justice Robert Jackson wrote, "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".

The active persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses abated somewhat, although thousands were arrested during World War II for seeking religious exemption from military service. They were accused, baselessly, of being Nazi sympathizers.

See also

• Knocking, a documentary on Jehovah's Witnesses that features Lillian and William Gobitis
• List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 310

External links

• Full text of decision at findlaw.com
• Billy Gobitas' letter to Minersville, Pennsylvania, school directors, explaining why the young Jehovah's Witness refused to salute the American flag, 5 November 1935. (image)