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| Kevin Hasson, president of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, with Knight John Carey, his sons Brendan and Spencer, and wife Adrienne. |
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| Young Brendan Carey, a defendant in the case, meets with reporters outside the courthouse. |
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| Carey and his wife Adrienne face more microphones. |
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| Hasson and Supreme Advocate Paul Devin. |
In Hearing Room Number 1 of San Francisco’s 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, Dec. 4, it was the Knights of Columbus vs. Michael Newdow, the atheist who has been trying to persuade the federal courts to declare the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional.
The case is entitled Newdow v. Carey, and John Carey is a Knight of Columbus from Elk Grove, Calif. He was in the courtroom along with his wife Adrienne and his son Brendan, who are also defendants, and his younger son Spencer.
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Carey is one of seven Knights and their families who are “defendant intervenors" in the case, along with the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus. Other defendants in the suit include the United States, the state of California and several Sacramento area school districts.
The Order is represented in the suit by Kevin Hasson, a Knight and president of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm based in Washington, D.C. Hasson was joined in the appellate courtroom by Supreme Advocate Paul Devin.
Hasson, who shared time during the oral arguments with lawyers for the Justice Department and the Elk Grove School District, reminded the three judge panel that the words “under God” protect our fundamental rights, because they make clear that those rights are God-given, and cannot be taken away by the government.
The Knights of Columbus was the leading proponent of the 1954 addition of the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. U.S. Knights began including the words “under God” in the Pledge in 1951 after the organization’s board of directors adopted a resolution mandating that the amended Pledge be formally recited in each of its 750 Fourth Degree assemblies.
A year later, the Supreme Council adopted a resolution that urged Congress and the White House to add the words “under God” to the Pledge. Supreme Knight Luke Hart, who was also president of the National Fraternal Congress, persuaded the other 110 fraternal societies to support the resolution as well.
The Pledge of Allegiance was formally amended by Congress and signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower on Flag Day, June 14, 1954. In a letter following the action, President Eisenhower thanked Supreme Knight Hart for the K of C’s work in making the addition of the words “under God,” to the Pledge a reality.
In 2005, atheist Michael Newdow, whose earlier lawsuit had been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court because he lacked standing, filed a new challenge with a number of co-plaintiffs. He asked the U.S. District Court in Sacramento to declare the Pledge unconstitutional because it contains the words “under God.” The Knights of Columbus and seven individual Knights and their families sought and were granted permission to join the suit as defendant-intervenors. In 2006, the District Court ruled against the Pledge, and the Knights immediately appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
A brief on behalf of the Knights of Columbus notes that, in many other cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has referred to the Pledge of Allegiance as “the standard for evaluating the permissibility of other government expression that employs religious imagery.”
The brief reminds the court that one of many indications that the nation’s founders, who wrote and interpreted the Constitution, were comfortable with official references to God, including a tradition begun by former Chief Justice John Marshall, of opening Supreme Court sessions with the phrase, “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.”
It is expected that the 9th Circuit panel will issue its decision in the spring of 2008.
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