Town trustee loses his job - well, is recalled by voters - after he publicly fails to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at town meetings.
I think this is unwise. Apparently his objection as an agnostic is the wording “under God” in the Pledge. While the voters may reasonably decide, in an ordinary election, that they’d rather have a Pledge-minded guy in office, I fail to see how this rises to the level that a recall effort was justified.
Of course, the voters are free to vote as they wish, and if the law permits recalls, then their actions are certainly legal. But I’d say this was a bit hasty and unwise, at least from where I sit.
While from a legal standpoint you are correct as far as I know and I agree that these people are being unwise, I do not otherwise share the mildness of your response. You’ll have to excuse me for a moment. If I continue grinding my teeth this way I will need emergency dental surgery.
On the plus side, the news story did grace us with this fun tonguetwister:
Hell, voters do unwise things all of the time. The continuing presence in the Senate of Robert Byrd is proof of that.
Their actions aside (and I don’t consider them well considered), David Habacker is full of it. Nobody has denied him his constitutional rights to freedom of speech or religion. They’ve relieved him of the burdens of office, which he has no constitutional right to.
If people were to have second thoughts about my fitness for office because of my atheism or my membership in Jim Jones’ People’s Temple, I would have no constitutional recourse.
I’ve said before that not all bad things are unconstitutional, and this would be yet another example.
To put that in perspective, there are also some Christians – e.g., the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I think – who won’t recite the pledge or salute the flag because they think it’s a form of idolatry. (Same problem early Christians had with sacrificing to the Roman emperor – and the same issues arose then: Everybody else thought they were being unreasonable in refusing to make a simple gesture of loyalty and patriotism; but to the Christians it was a crucial moral/religious issue.)
There are Christians (most notably the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but also other random Christians, including yours truly) who believe it goes against the tenets of their faith to pledge allegiance to a nation - that whatever is meant by ‘allegiance’, it’s properly given to God, rather than to any human being or institution. So it isn’t just atheists and agnostics that might have a problem with reciting the Pledge.
Given the Constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, and the protections of the Civil Rights laws, you can’t be fired from a ‘normal’ job, public or private sector, for being unwilling to say the PoA on account of your religion or lack thereof. But if you hold elective office, the voters can of course vote you out for any reason, or none at all. And that’s as it should be.
In the case of a student or a private or public sector employee, than yes. But remember, Mr. Habecker wasn’t forced to say the Pledge. He was voted out of office for his refusal to do so, which is a very different thing entirely.
It certainly isn’t the in the spirit of “no religious test for office” though because elections aren’t the same things a employment tests, there is no legal recourse here. But it’s not very American.
No. Barnette simply said that a school could not compel a student to recite the pledge. No one was compelling Habecker to recite it, they just said that if he chose not to do so, they wanted him off the town council.
It is stupid, chauvinistic, and warped to demand loyalty oaths to be a member of a town council, but it is not unconstitutional.
If Habecker sues, it would probably be under Article 6, paragraph 3 of the Constitution:
I have no idea how that would play. I suspect that he would lose. He was not barred by the board of elections from running for office, he was ousted by the electorate for not being a mindless drone.
Count me in on the side of Mr. Moto: “I’ve said before that not all bad things are unconstitutional, and this would be yet another example.” Wish I could be that clear and concise in my writing.
What Barnette said was that it’s unconstitutional to force public school students to say the pledge in school. That’s different than in this case, where the voters recalled a politician who won’t say the pledge.
Well, this time you seem to have encapsulated a consensus here. Congratulations, and accept my agreement with you and, it would seem, half the rest of the GD contingent as well!
You’re confusing eligibility to run for office (or be sworn in when you’re elected) with the concept at issue here, which is whether voters can use that as a criterion.
Perhaps the guy shouldn’t have been voted out of office for this, but he’s showing himself a grad-A moron for his comments afterwards, so maybe the voters did the right thing for the wrong reason. His ignorance of the Constitution is appalling.
I believe that’s because the Pledge serves primarily a civilian function. The military covers this combined oath of allegiance and respect toward the flag with its own oaths and its own ceremonies toward the colors.
The Pledge would be superfluous here, and the military treats it as such. In the time I was in the Navy, I never saw it spoken in any kind of official capacity.
