West Virginia State Board of Education’s Landmark Free Speech Decision
By Phin Upham
Free speech is one of the most important rights that this country was founded upon, which is surely reason enough to salute a flag. Right? Not so for a child of Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1943. The Barnette family was shocked to find that their children were being forced to salute to the flag, which goes against the Jehovah’s Witness religion. Under their doctrine, patrons of the church are forbidden from saluting or pledging to symbols. This presented a problem for the school system of West Virginia, which had adopted legislation which stated that students were to pledge allegiance to the flag with a Bellamy salute. Failure to carry out this ritual was viewed as insubordination, and students would be “dealt with accordingly.”
The case found its way to the Supreme Court, where the Justices found 6-3 that the requirement to salute to the American flag was unconstitutional.
The court’s ruling was very interesting because it was a strongly worded defense of free speech, and cited the free speech clause of the First Amendment. The idea of saluting the flag was built on national sentiment. Justice Felix Frankfurter had ruled in a previous case that saluting a flag was a means of promoting democracy. The argument was refuted by Justice Robert H. Jackson, who concluded that flags are a means of coercing unanimous sentiment from the populace.
In Jackson’s eyes, people forced to salute a flag would learn to despise or ridicule it. Ultimately, in Robert’s view, the right to choose whether one would salute or not was something he viewed as beyond political scrutiny.
About the Author: Phin Upham is an investor at a family office/ hedgefund, where he focuses on special situation illiquid investing. Before this position, Phin Upham was working at Morgan Stanley in the Media and Telecom group. You may contact Phin on his Phin Upham website or Facebook page.