Standing for the Pledge

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The Texas attorney general has jumped into a Houston area lawsuit to defend a state law that requires schoolchildren to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance unless a parent or guardian opts them out. ... The Texas attorney general has jumped into a Houston area lawsuit to defend a state law that requires schoolchildren to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance unless a parent or guardian opts them out. State Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday that his office has moved to intervene in the suit brought on behalf of former Windfern High School student India Landry last year. Landry, then 17, accused the Cypress Fairbanks Independent School District and several of its officials of violating her First Amendment rights when they suspended her for refusing to stand during the pledge. Amid nationwide protests over race relations and police brutality in America, Landry, who is black, said she took issue with this line in the pledge: “With liberty and justice for all.” ... Kallinen pointed to President Donald Trump’s call to fire NFL players who refuse to stand for the national anthem as a reason for the hostility against Landry and others. Before Trump made that suggestion in September 2017, Kallinen, who has been a civil rights attorney for 27 years, said he’d never received a single case involving students being forced to stand and recite the pledge at schools. A few days after Trump’s comments, he said he was presented with three instances of local students who were punished for not standing and reciting the pledge. In Landry’s case, she was ordered to leave her school on a Monday, with the principal threatening to have the police remove her if her mother didn’t arrive within five minutes, according to the lawsuit. Landry returned to school with her mother on the following Friday. That’s when Kallinen said her mother offered the principal written permission for her daughter to sit during the pledge, but that permission was allegedly declined. Landry’s mother was told, “It doesn’t matter ― everyone at this school stands for the Pledge of Allegiance,” Kallinen said.

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Similar incidents have occurred in schools across the country since President Donald Trump called professional athletes who kneeled during the anthem “sons of bitches.” Almost three dozen schools in Louisiana were instructed not to allow student-athletes to kneel during the anthem. A teacher in Farmington Hills, Michigan was put on leave for allegedly assaulting an 11-year-old student who refused to stand for the pledge. Florida schools, at one point since Trump’s comments, were threatening to send home students who didn’t stand for the anthem or pledge home unless they had parental permission.

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via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/2OUI2xa