N.J. school district drops 'God bless America'

The Haddon Heights School District will not fight an American Civil Liberties Union complaint about a school tradition of saying "God bless America" after the daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

The challenge involved the district's Glenview Elementary School, where faculty who are no longer with the district began having children say "God bless America" after the pledge following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The practice took root at Glenview but was not picked up by other district schools.

Edward Barocas, legal director of the ACLU of New Jersey, wrote in a Dec. 30 letter to district counsel Joseph F. Betley that "having elementary school students invoke God's blessing at the beginning of every school day, during an official school assembly, is unconstitutional."

Subsequently, Glenview principal Sam Sassano told school families and staff that instead of taking on "a potential constitutional challenge and the accompanying legal fees," the district administration had decided to discontinue its official endorsement of reciting the benediction at the kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school.

"We will explore alternative methods of honoring the victims and first responders of the 9/11 tragedy," Sassano wrote in his Sunday message.

Whether having the children say "God bless America" after the pledge "is more akin to religious prayer or simply a manifestation of patriotism has no clear-cut legal answer," the principal wrote.

On Tuesday, Barocas praised the district's decision.

"Our Constitution is clear: Schools can't coerce or impose religion on children," Barocas said. "It's the job of parents to decide how and whether to instill religion, not public schools."

There is particular concern, he continued, about impressionable children and a tradition like the one at Glenview.

"It gives some children an uncomfortable choice between opting out and risking the status of pariah or troublemaker, or participating in a group exercise that pressures them into voicing beliefs that may run counter to their own and their parents'," Barocas said.

Sassano, in an email Tuesday, said many children still were saying "God bless America."

"We will not interfere with their freedom of speech," Sassano wrote. "When it comes up in a classroom for discussion, teachers discuss freedom of speech and explain that each student has the right to say or not say" God bless America.

In the past, some children had opted out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance, he wrote. "We just ask all students to be respectful during the recitation."

While the district chose to not proceed with a potentially costly court challenge, there was arguably legal precedent for it to have done so and possibly prevail.

In February, a Superior Court judge in Monmouth County dismissed a lawsuit alleging that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violated the rights of atheist schoolchildren.

In that case, American Humanist Association v. Matawan-Aberdeen Regional School District, Judge David Bauman said that reciting the pledge was a secular, rather than religious, exercise, and also that the child in question was not being forced to say "under God."

A similar ruling - that the pledge was a political exercise - was reached in 2014 in a Massachusetts case.

New Jersey law calls for children to recite the pledge, which did not contain the words "under God" until 1954, during the Cold War. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that individuals can opt out of the pledge.

Challenging the humanists in both cases was the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington public interest law firm that successfully argued Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. In that lawsuit, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that certain privately held corporations did not have to pay for employees' contraception under the Affordable Care Act if doing so was against the employers' religious beliefs.

Some Glenview families were upset about the break with the post-Sept. 11 tradition.

Joe Gentile, a former teacher and local businessman with two children at Glenview, said he could see both sides. But he said he would not want to see district dollars diverted from education.

"What I wouldn't want is to spend money on a lawsuit," he said.

rgiordano@phillynews.com

856-779-3893 @ritagiordano