ABSTRACT
Minersville School District v. Gobitis, 310 US 586, was the first flag-salute case to reach the US Supreme Court. The case required the Court to interpret the two religion clauses of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. Gobitis involved two children of a Jehovah's Witness who were expelled from public school for refusing to participate in the required daily ceremony of saluting the American flag and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The sole dissenter, Justice Harlan F. Stone, argued that Gobitis rested on liberties guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. He claimed that the children were expelled solely because of their religious convictions and that neither their actions nor statements of opinion exhibited any disloyalty to the government of the United States. Justice Stone's stirring dissent served to support the Court's 1943 reversal of Gobitis in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 US 624.
