You Can’t Be Compelled to Salute the Flag: “West Virginia v. Barnette”
The Supreme Court decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette marked the culmination of a long struggle over whether the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses could be compelled to salute the American flag in public schools.
On this day, the Court declared the West Virginia compulsory salute law unconstitutional because it compelled people to express a belief in violation of their conscience. Justice Robert Jackson’s opinion (see below) is one of the most eloquent statements about the right of individual conscience in the history of the Court. The decision was issued on Flag Day, which only enhanced the symbolic impact of the issue at stake.
Two developments brought the issue to the level of a national crisis in the late 1930s and early 1940s. First, the Jehovah’s Witnesses embarked on an aggressive national proselytizing campaign in which they would descend on communities en masse, going door to door, and broadcasting their message, which included virulently anti-Catholic themes. As a result, they became the most hated religious group in America and were the subject of restrictive laws and vigilante attacks.
Second, with the world clearly heading toward another world war, a surge of patriotic fervor swept the country. That led many states to pass laws compelling public school students to salute the American flag every morning. The Jehovah’s Witnesses argued that the compulsory salute violated their religious principles. In Minersville School District v. Gobitis, decided on June 3, 1940, the Supreme Court upheld Pennsylvania’s state compulsory salute law. Then, in an extraordinary development, three justices on the Court changed their minds and indicated they would hear a second case.
Justice Robert Jackson for the Court: “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, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
Watch Jehovah’s Witnesses and the flag salute in the 1940s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owiBJIkmJbQ
Learn more about the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ contributions to civil liberties: Shawn Francis Peters, Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution (2000)