Supreme Court Decision

In 1940, a case was argued in the United States Supreme Court that dealt with an idea basically related to nationalism and the idea of whether or not a national religion was being promoted in the public school system in Pennsylvania; and whether or not this idea of nationalism interfered with an individuals personal religion.

In the late 1930s two school children, the Gobitis who were Jehovah's Witnesses, were denied a free elementary school education because of their refusal to salute the flag in Minersville Pennsylvania. Their reason for this refusal was tied into their religion, which believed that such gestures of saluting the flag were forbidden by command of the Scripture.

Since the Minersville school district had required that children salute the American flag as a condition of their attendance in school, the Gobitis children were expelled, meaning that their parents were left to foot the bill to their education.

The Gobitis family believed that their rights to freedom of religion and their right to due process had indeed been violated when their children were denied an education. The case would ultimately have to be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. The Minersville School district, believing that they were standing on firm ground with this requirement, fought the battle out in the Supreme Court and ultimately won. However, the question still remains of whether or not the decisio

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s, but they are responsible for some of the most important cases establishing religious freedom. The Witnesses claimed a right to proselytize, an action, without state regulation, as essential to the free exercise of their creed, a belief. In several cases the Court upheld these claims, but primarily on speech rather than religion clause grounds, yet these decisions are in fact the basis for modern jurisprudence on the Free Exercise Clause. Undoubtedly the most famous of the early free exercise cases involved the Witnesses' refusal to salute the American flag. The sect takes literally the biblical command not to "bow down to graven images," and considers the flag an icon. In the first case, Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940), Justice Felix Frankfurter sustained local school board requirements that all students participate in the morning flag salute ritual. Frankfurter rejected the free exercise claim almost summarily, noting that civic obligations outweighed religious convictions. One should note that Gobitis was decided with Europe already at war and the United States rearming. Patriotism seemed the highest value to many, including eight members of the Court; only Justice Harlan Fiske Stone dissented, charging th
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