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The 9th Circuit Court is often the target of criticism from religious conservatives—it upheld a school's right to deny a valedictorian's religious speech in 2000, for example, and recently considered whether the parsonage tax exemption is unconstitutional.

In 1970, however, the court defended the inscription "In God We Trust" on currency. In yesterday's decision, the appeals court took note of this decision, but argued the cases are too different: "School children are not coerced into reciting or otherwise actively led to participating in an endorsement of the markings on the money in circulation."

"The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is the most reversed court in the country by the United States Supreme Court," notes Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit legal organization specializing in religious-freedom cases. "In one recent survey, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit 80 to 90 percent of the time in one term."

Likewise, Staver tells Christianity Today, this decision will be overturned by the Supreme Court if not by the full 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In the meantime, he says, the decision will likely make the pledge more popular than ever. "I think it will galvanize Americans and actually wake Americans up to the judicial activism that's in the courts," he said.

But it may also make school administrators across the country wary about any mention of God in the classroom, says John Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, which also specializes in religious-liberty cases. However, he warns against caricaturing the ruling. "This was a decision carefully based on precedent. It's not a flim-flam decision, and it's not a flim-flam case."

Whitehead agrees that the Supreme Court will likely overturn the decision if the full 9th Circuit doesn't do so first, but he predicts it would be a 5-4 decision. "There's a lot of ambiguity right now about the use of the word God," he says. "Our country has been undergoing an identity crisis since the 1940s. This is not an illegitimate issue based on today's society."

However, says Whitehead, by striking "Under God" as unconstitutional, the court has called into question even more important religious references. "According to the Declaration of Independence," he says, "the very right this father used to sue comes from God."

With additional reporting by Todd Hertz. Ted Olsen is online managing editor of Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2002 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

More coverage of the decision is available from The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, Law.com, USA Today, and the Associated Press.

"The sort of rigid overreaction that characterized [yesterday's decision] will not make genuine defense of the First Amendment any easier," The New York Times editorializes today.

"We believe in strict separation between church and state, but the pledge is hardly a particular danger spot crying out for judicial policing," says The Washington Post. The ruling "can also invite a reversal, and that could mean establishing a precedent that sanctions a broader range of official religious expression than the pledge itself."

"For all the overheated and dire predictions … the 'under God' phrase has in no way led to establishment of an official state religion," argues the Los Angeles Times. "Thus the 9th Circuit decision is a cure without an ailment."

"Does this country really want to reach the point where every mention of religion needs to be eliminated in the name of constitutional purity?" asked the San Francisco Chronicle.

Other opinions are available from The Washington Post's Marc Fisher and National Review Online's Victor Davis Hanson and Jack Dunphy.

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June (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46