A father sued Maine’s Falmouth School Department after it failed to follow state law by not giving students the opportunity to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The lawsuit urges the Cumberland County Superior Court to issue an injunction requiring them to shift and provide a structured opportunity to recite the pledge.
“The lawsuit highlights a straightforward violation of Maine law and the Falmouth School Department’s own policy,” attorney Jack Baldacci told the Portland Press Herald. “My client, Christopher Hickey, is seeking to ensure compliance so that his son Clayton, and all Falmouth students, can benefit from this important civic tradition. We’re optimistic the court will act promptly to reinstate it.”
According to a Maine statute, a school administrative unit “shall allow every student enrolled in the school administrative unit the opportunity to recite the Pledge of Allegiance at some point during a school day in which students are required to attend. A school administrative unit may not require a student to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.”
While the father fights for his son’s ability to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, some cities have moved to drop the pledge.
The Winchester Planning Commission voted 4-2 to drop the Pledge of Allegiance from its bylaws. Commissioner Leesa Mayfield, who opposed the proposal to add the pledge to the bylaws, said, as reported by The Winchester Star, that Planning Commission Chairman Beau Correll “has been rewriting the bylaws unilaterally.”
“The Pledge of Allegiance has an importance, of course,” she added. “But the need to recite it at the beginning of every city meeting in a performative way seems unnecessary.”
“To hear such a basic concept of our American way of life called ‘pageantry,’ labeled ‘unnecessary,’ or treated as a ‘ritual’ that somehow gets in the way of a normal meeting – I found it incredibly offensive,” Correll said in response to the decision.
