I pledge allegiance to keeping Florida opt-out provision quiet
Frank Cerabino
Florida still seems to be grappling with how to handle students who don’t want to participate in the morning Pledge of Allegiance.
You’d think by now we’d have had this settled. After all, we’re all about freedom here in Florida.
It was 11 years ago when a Boynton Beach High School student named Cameron Frazier was sent to the principal’s office by his math teacher for failing to stand and recite the Pledge.
Frazier’s decision, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, ended up in federal court, where a judge was asked to decide whether the Pledge law in Florida schools violated a student’s constitutional right to free speech and privacy.
The Florida law at the time allowed students to be excused from reciting the words in the Pledge if their parents requested the excusal in writing.
But even if the students were excused, they were not permitted to remain seated.
“Any student who is excused from reciting the Pledge must still show full respect for the flag by standing at attention while the Pledge is recited,” the state law said.
U.S. District Judge Kenneth Ryskamp, a Reagan appointee to the federal bench, ruled that the Florida law violated Frazier’s free speech rights by requiring him to get parental permission to opt out and also to compel him to stand whether or not he had parental permission.
Ryskamp cited the language in a West Virginia case:
“If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”
Ryskamp ordered the school district to pay Frazier $32,500 for costs and attorneys fees. But that wasn’t the last word.
Two years later, a three-district panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed in part with Ryskamp, finding that it was legally permissible to restrict the free speech rights of non-adult students as long as it “advanced the protection of the constitutional rights of parents.”
In other words, students could only assert their right not to participate if their parents sanctioned it. As for