Commenting on the Pennsylvania bill, the Philadelphia Inquirer of June 16, 1971, said editorially:

“The bill is unconstitutional on its face. Similar compulsory flag salutes have been struck down time after time by the U.S. Supreme Court, most notably in the 1943 case of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, when the late Justice Robert Jackson delivered an opinion in which he eloquently declared:

“‘If there is any fixed star in our Constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.’”a

The legislators in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives are unquestionably sincere in their desire to instill patriotism in schoolchildren, but the fact remains that they ignored the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. Continuing its comments, this newspaper editorial said:

“And patriotism certainly cannot be promoted when legislative bodies themselves flout the Constitution. The issue, declared Rep. Ray Hovis, is simple: ‘It is whether this legislature wishes to commit what is virtually an act of civil disobedience because it does not like the present constitutional law on saluting the flag.’”

Even the Supreme Court of the United States has had to reverse itself at times because of perceiving that it had erred in previous decisions, a classic example being when it reversed its former Pennsylvania flag salute decision in the case of Minersville School District v. Gobitis, of June 3, 1940 (310 U.S. 586), which had become the signal for a general upsurge of violence throughout the country, against Jehovah’s witnesses.