![]() ![]() Not all loyalty oath cases based on First Amendment ![]() The continued popularity of the Pledge of Allegiance as an avowal of patriotism is apparent in the ongoing conflict over its wording. Barnette (1943), striking down West Virginia’s mandatory flag salute statute as a violation of the First Amendment. State laws requiring students to salute the American flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools led to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. The Pledge of Allegiance is a form of loyalty oath. Supreme Court struck down mandatory flag salute for West Virginia schoolchildren Both federal and state governments also enacted security programs that included loyalty oaths for government employees and members of labor unions and professional organizations. It also enacted statutes - such as the Smith Act of 1940 and the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950 - seeking to stem the rise of communism in the United States. Loyalty oaths have been regarded as essential tools in the defense of the United States from its enemies from both within and outside the country, especially in times of war.ĭuring and after World War I and World War II and during the Cold War, widespread fear of communism, fascism, and socialism, and the concomitant anxiety of ensuring that Americans were and would remain loyal to the United States, led federal and state governments to enact legislation to weed out subversive organizations and those who supported them.Ĭongress aggressively investigated the loyalty of citizens, notably through the special House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee, chaired by U.S. During and after World Wars, government enacted loyalty oaths for employees ![]() Persons born in the United States are citizens by birth, but resident aliens who wish to become citizens must first swear an oath of allegiance to the United States. Loyalty oaths also play an important part in the naturalization process. Congress the federal judiciary and officers of state legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. 3 requires oaths of office for members of the U.S. Constitution requires the President to take an oath of office. When the United States became a self-governing republic, oaths of loyalty to the new political system became an important tool in helping sustain it.Īrticle 2, 1, cl. Oaths of loyalty were an important tool in early America The constitutionality of loyalty oaths is part of the larger struggle between the power of government to regulate perceived threats to national security and the First Amendment rights of citizens to speak and associate freely. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, used with permission from the Associated Press)Ī loyalty oath is a declaration by an individual of allegiance to a government and its institutions and a disavowal of support for foreign ideologies or associations. Faculty refused to sign not because they were communists, but on the belief that compliance infringed on academic independence. Saxon was one of 31 faculty fired from the University of California in 1950 for refusing to sign a "loyalty oath" disavowing any party advocating the overthrow of the U.S. UCLA physicist David Saxon, right, waits his turn to speak during the 50th anniversary retrospective of the "University Loyalty Oath Symposium" in 1999 in Berkeley, California. ![]()
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