Tuesday, May 13, 2008
For Michael Newdow, scrapping "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance became as much about parental rights as about the First Amendment. Despite a Supreme Court loss, he still expects, someday, to win.
Jun 14, 2004 | On Flag Day, June 14, 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed legislation that put the words "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance. Fifty years to the day later, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided that those words will stay in the pledge -- at least for now, and probably for a very long time to come.
Michael Newdow, the emergency room doctor, law school graduate and lifelong atheist who challenged the invocation of God in the Pledge of Allegiance, knew this day was coming. In an interview with Salon last week, Newdow predicted the Supreme Court would issue its decision today, but he believed the court would see some kind of poetic justice in taking "under God" out of the pledge exactly 50 years after the words went in.
Newdow was right about the high court's timing, but wrong about everything else. He thought the justices might agree with him unanimously. They did just the opposite. Five justices said the court should steer clear of the pledge controversy because of legal questions over Newdow's custody of his 10-year-old daughter; three others said he had standing but was wrong on the merits of the case; and the ninth justice, Antonin Scalia, recused himself after making public comments suggesting he had decided to rule against Newdow even before the case was heard.
While Newdow may someday be able to overcome the ruling that he lacked standing -- he's fighting for equal custody of his daughter, a legal status that might allow him to renew his case -- the long-term outlook is grim. With Scalia and the three concurring justices already aligned against him, there's little chance that this court will ever decide that the invocation of God in the pledge is unconstitutional.
Newdow was crestfallen this morning -- but not so much for his loss in the pledge case as for the commentary it made about his rights as a parent. "I may be the best father in the world," Newdow told the Associated Press minutes after the ruling came down. Newdow's daughter spends 10 days a month with him, and he's fighting hard for more. "The suggestion that I don't have sufficient custody [to satisfy the court's standing requirement] is just incredible. This is such a blow for parental rights."
Newdow's focus on the family-law aspect of his case might come as surprise to those who -- like the angry Christian patriots calling for his death at the slam site www.michaelnewdow.com view him as a single-minded zealot working to write God out of public life. But to those who know him, Newdow's reaction was to be expected. Rambling around his suburban Sacramento home last week, Newdow said the pledge case, which had not yet been decided, was already "old news." Each time he started to discuss it, the conversation shifted somehow to Newdow's fight for equal custody of his daughter. He's obsessed with it, consumed by it, and he can't not talk about it -- even if what he says is unhelpful, embarrassing or beyond impolitic.
The family law judges are "idiots," Newdow said last week, and the mother of his child is an "abuser" who tricked him into fatherhood in order to get his money.
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