Thanks for the information. It is surprisingly hard to find much
specific information about this issue.

To my knowledge the Barnette decision is so far the only Supreme Court
decision
regarding the Pledge. I can't imagine it was hard to find.

The only exception is the Gobitis decision a year earlier which Barnette
specifically overturned because JWs were being considered traitors and were
being beaten because of their refusal to say the pledge. Many communities
believed that the Gobitis decision gave them free rein to lynch JWs. The
Supreme Court realized that they had unwittingly created the situation they
wished to avoid, admitted that they had made a horrific mistake and corrected
it in one of the most well written decisions regarding individual liberty and
its supremacy over State authority that they have ever judged.

Remember that this was during WW2 when both Gobitis and Barnette were decided
and after Gobitis, the Court saw JWs becoming the religious pariahs in the US
that Jews were becoming in Central Europe. The Barnette decision made
specific
reference to this.

"Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought
essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as
by
evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times
and
places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a
dynasty
or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate
methods
to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to
an
ever-increasing severity. As governmental pressure toward unity becomes
greater, so strife becomes more bitter as to whose unity it shall be.
Probably
no deeper division of our people could proceed from any provocation than from
finding it necessary to choose what doctrine and whose program public
educational officials shall compel youth to unite in embracing. Ultimate
futility of such attempts to compel coherence is the lesson of every such
effort from the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its
pagan unity, the Inquisition, as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the
Siberian exiles as a means to Russian unity, down to the fast failing efforts
of our present totalitarian enemies. Those who begin coercive elimination of
dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification
of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. It seems trite but
necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to
avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the
American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We
set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies
those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here
is
to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority." - US
Supreme Court, West Virginia v. Barnette (1943)



Rich Goranson, Amherst, NY, USA (aa#MCMXCIX, a-vet#1)
EAC Ill-Legal Dept. "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here"

"My country, right or wrong; to be defended when right and righted when
wrong."
- Thomas Jefferson

Remember that this was during WW2 when both Gobitis and Barnette
were decided and after Gobitis, the Court saw JWs becoming the
religious pariahs in the US that Jews were becoming in Central
Europe. The Barnette decision made specific reference to this.