A secular legal firm is defending a teenage student who alleged that he was punished with detention as well as a failing grade for omitting the phrase “under God” in a recent reading of the Pledge of Allegiance over his school’s public address system. The American Humanist Association’s (AHA) legal wing sent a letter to Tracy Unified School District in California on November 11, accusing officials at Merrill F. West High School of violating their client, Derek Giardina’s First Amendment rights.
Giardina is an agnostic who does not believe in the phrase “under God” and so he decided to leave it out while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over his school’s public address system recently.
According to Appignani Humanist Legal Center (AHLC), Giardina was told by his school administration that the law required him to say “under God” while reciting the pledge and subsequently punished him unfairly with a detention as well as a failing grade.
“I think I have a low C now, from doing other speeches, but it is a very large point value,” Giardina said. “There’s something disciplinary happening because of my religious beliefs.”
Obviously, AHLC agrees with their client.
“Disciplining an agnostic student for exercising his rights is discrimination,” Roy Speckhardt, the group’s executive director, said in a statement. “Including ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance marginalizes the millions of patriotic Americans who are agnostic, atheist, humanist or otherwise good without a god.”
The legal body is demanding that Merrill F. West High School reassess Giardina’s grade immediately, which is only 50 out of a possible 100 points at the moment, and get rid of the infringement from his school record. The school was given a week’s time to respond.
AHLC is of the opinion that the school unfairly and completely violated Giardina’s constitutional rights by punishing him with detention and docking his grades. However, the school has defended itself, saying the assignment was to recite the pledge as it is written and students who share a secular ideology were given the option to avail themselves of an alternate assignment.
The secular group had several other cases such as Giardina’s to share with the media, as more students have come out recently, alleging they were punished by their respective school authorities for refusing to say the phrase “under God” while reciting the pledge.
David Niose, AHA’s legal director, said earlier this year that public schools have been chastising humanist and atheist children by enforcing the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance on a daily basis.
“[It] violates the principles of equal rights and nondiscrimination,” he said.
AHA is also responsible for the Don’t Say the Pledge campaign, that took off earlier this year. The campaign encourages Americans not to recite the Pledge of Allegiance until the phrase “under God” is removed from it. The group argues that the contended phrase was added to the pledge by a Baptist minister Francis Bellamy only in 1954. They want the original draft to be brought back, as it was far more inclusive and does not require Americans to say “under God.”
Photo Credits: The Blaze
