Constitutional Law

What Happens When Non Lawyers Comment On the Law

NBC News’s political director Chuck Todd during an on-air discussion with MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews wrongly asserted that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “wants to get rid of the pledge.” Todd was referencing, as Media Matters For America points out, a three-judge panel decision from the circuit that dealt with a legal challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance. (The Pledge was challenged by a California public school parent as a violation of the First Amendment principle of church-state separation because of its reference, “under God.”)

“In fact, in the case that Todd was referring to, Newdow v. U.S. Congress,” Media Matters notes, the 9th Circuit “did not decide the entire Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional.” Instead, the court in Newdow ruled that a 1954 federal law inserting the words “under God” into the Pledge made it unconstitutional for school officials to lead public school students in reciting the Pledge.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on October 03, 2008 (boomark / email).