I wonder how this turned out...

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The latest court challenge to the words "under God" in the Pledge of
Allegiance, Newdow v. Carey, will be argued before a panel of the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 4 in San Francisco.

Fact Sheet

The Knights of Columbus and seven individual Knights and their families from the
Sacramento area are parties to the lawsuit, and will be represented in the case
by Kevin Hasson, a Knight and president of the Becket Fund for Religious
Liberty.


The Knights of Columbus was the leading proponent of the 1954 addition of the
words "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance. U.S. Knights began including the
words "�under God"� in the Pledge of Allegiance in 1951 after the organization's
board of directors adopted a resolution mandating that the amended pledge be
formally recited in each of its 750 Fourth Degree assemblies.

A year later, the Supreme Council adopted a resolution that urged Congress and
the White House to add the words "�under God"�to the Pledge. Supreme Knight Luke
Hart, who was also president of the National Fraternal Congress, persuaded the
other 110 fraternal societies to support the resolution as well.

The Pledge of Allegiance was formally amended by Congress and signed into law by
President Dwight Eisenhower on Flag Day, June 14, 1954. In a letter following
the action, President Eisenhower thanked Supreme Knight Hart for the K of C's
work in making the addition of the words "�under God",� to the Pledge a reality.

Today the Order is directly involved in defending the Pledge against the most
recent legal challenge to its constitutionality.

In 2005, atheist Michael Newdow, whose earlier lawsuit had been rejected by the
U.S. Supreme Court because he lacked standing, filed a new challenge with a
number of co-plaintiffs. He asked the U.S. District Court in Sacramento to
declare the Pledge unconstitutional because it contains the words "�under God."�
The Knights of Columbus and seven individual Knights and their families sought
and were granted permission to join the suit as defendant-intervenors. The case,
Newdow v. Carey, has several defendants in addition to the Knights, including
the Rio Linda (California) Union School District and the U.S. federal
government. In 2006, the District Court ruled against the Pledge, and the
Knights immediately appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
9th Circuit.

A brief filed on behalf of the Knights of Columbus notes that, in many other
cases, the U.S. Supreme Court has referred to the Pledge of Allegiance as "�the
standard for evaluating the permissibility of other government expression that
employs religious imagery."�

The brief reminds the court that one of many indications that the nation's
founders, who wrote and interpreted the Constitution, were comfortable with
official references to God, including a tradition begun by former Chief Justice
John Marshall, of opening Supreme Court sessions with the phrase, "�God save the
United States and this Honorable Court."�

I'm a third degree Knight ...good post Joel