Minersville School District v. Gobitis

Summary

Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 U.S. 586, decided on 3 June 1940, asked whether a Pennsylvania public school could expel children who refused, on religious grounds, to salute the American flag. In the autumn of 1935 Lillian Gobitis, then twelve, and her brother William, ten, stopped joining the daily ceremony in which pupils recited the pledge of allegiance with right hands extended toward the flag. The family belonged to the Jehovah's Witnesses, who read the salute as bowing to a graven image forbidden by Exodus 20. The Minersville board expelled both children, and their father Walter sued to have them readmitted. Judge Albert Maris of the federal district court ruled for the family, and the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed. The school district argued that a general requirement of patriotic exercise, aimed at no sect, lay within the ordinary power of local boards to shape instruction and to cultivate loyalty in the young. The family answered that the First Amendment, applied to the states through the Fourteenth, forbade officials to compel children to profess what their faith prohibited, especially when the penalty was loss of a public education. The Court reversed by a vote of eight to one. Justice Felix Frankfurter, writing for seven members, with Justice McReynolds concurring in the result, treated religious liberty as a right that must sometimes be adjusted to general laws, citing Reynolds v. United States and the draft cases. He reasoned that national unity is the foundation of national security, that symbols such as the flag gather a people's traditions, and that judges are poorly placed to second-guess a legislature's choice of means for teaching loyalty. Remedy for an unwise law, he wrote, should be sought through persuasion and elections. Justice Harlan Fiske Stone dissented alone. He argued that the law went beyond restraining conduct and compelled children to affirm a belief they did not hold; that the state could teach patriotism by study rather than coerced profession; and that courts owe searching scrutiny to laws touching small religious minorities, citing his own footnote in United States v. Carolene Products (1938). The library text gives Frankfurter's opinion for the Court and Stone's full dissent from the U.S. Reports; the reporter's footnotes are left out. Reports of attacks on Witnesses multiplied in the months after the decision, and several state courts declined to follow it. In Jones v. Opelika (1942) Justices Black, Douglas and Murphy wrote that they now believed Gobitis wrongly decided, and on 14 June 1943 the Court overruled it in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. The family's surname was spelled Gobitas; the court papers carried a clerical misspelling.

Top Lessons

• Belief, conduct and a law aimed at no sect

  Frankfurter's central premise is that religious liberty protects belief but does not exempt believers from general civic duties that are not directed at any church. The Gobitis children were asked to do something every pupil did, and the majority read earlier cases on polygamy and military training as settling that such laws stand even against sincere scruple.

• Why the majority deferred to the school board

  The opinion repeatedly asks who should decide how loyalty is taught. Frankfurter believed that judges, unelected and untrained in pedagogy, should leave the choice of means to legislatures and local boards, trusting citizens to repeal unwise rules through the political process.

• Stone's distinction between teaching and compelling

  Stone did not deny the state's interest in patriotism. He argued that the schools could require study of American history and government, including the guarantees of civil liberty, without forcing a child to declare a belief. The difference between instruction and coerced profession became the hinge on which the Court reversed itself three years later.

• A precedent that lasted three years

  Gobitis was decided eight to one, yet within two years three justices in the majority publicly changed their minds, and in 1943 the Court overruled it. Students can study how new members, public events and further reflection led the same institution to a different answer on nearly identical facts.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The opinions concern school discipline, conscience and the scope of judicial review; the only reference to health is Frankfurter's passing list of ordinary state functions.