Thank God It's Standing

Today the Supreme Court rejected Michael Newdow's challenge to public school teachers leading the Pledge of Allegiance using the words "under God." The Court held that Newdow did not have standing to raise the issue on behalf of his daughter. The Washington Post has the story. The text of the opinion is available here.

This is exactly what I hoped the Court would do. I wanted them to avoid a decision on the merits because the legal claims on the merits are very difficult indeed. Here are two discussions in February 2003 and March of this year. However, as I said in this post, despite the fact that the law is largely on his side "If Newdow wins his case, it will prove that atheism is wrong, because it's going to take a miracle." The Supreme Court today proved me right, holding against Newdow without badly mangling the law of the Establishment Clause. (The law of standing, on the other hand, is already so badly mangled that it's hard to see what more damage they could possibly do to it.)

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the majority opinon. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, joined by Justices O'Connor and Thomas, also wrote to state their view that the recitation of the "under God" version of the Pledge does not violate the Constitution.

I'll have more when I get a chance to read the opinions.

UPDATE: Clarence Thomas uses the opportunity to argue that the Establishment Clause should not be held applicable to the States. Now we know what it would be like to have Judge Roy Moore on the Supreme Court.