Texas high school student expelled for sitting during pledge files federal lawsuit

A Texas student filed a federal lawsuit against her school district and principal for expelling her for sitting during the pledge of allegiance. The student had sat through the pledge some 200 times before her expulsion. When summoned to the principal’s office on October 2, she was told it was not the NFL and that she could stand for the pledge like other Blacks in her class. (Courthouse News Service, October 9, 2017, by Cameron Langford)

Law professor Eugene Volokh, The Washington Post, October 8, 2017, writes that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1943, W.Va. Board of Education v. Barnette, that government bodies including the schools could not force students to join in the pledge. The court ruled that forced compliance could consist of censorship as a student might “forego any contrary convictions of their own and become unwilling converts to the prescribed ceremony.”