Bid to remove ‘God’ from US pledge

SUPREME Court judges are to rule if millions of US schoolchildren should continue pledging allegiance to one nation “under God”.

An atheist argued the religious reference in the Pledge of Allegiance, a pledge of loyalty to the US usually recited in American classrooms, was an unconstitutional government promotion of religion in his daughter's third-grade classroom in Sacramento, California.

"I am an atheist. I don't believe in God," Michael Newdow told the justices and a packed Washington courtroom, arguing with passion and personal asides unusual for the dry, cerebral high court.

"Every school morning, my child is asked to stand up, face that flag, put her hand over her heart and say that her father is wrong."

On the other side, Bush administration lawyer Theodore Olson said the pledge reflected America's religious heritage. "It is an acknowledgement of the religious basis of the framers of the Constitution, who believed not only that the right to revolt, but that the right to vest power in the people to create a government ... came as a result of religious principles."

That view was loudly represented outside the court, with scores of demonstrators reciting the pledge and carrying signs that read: "In God We Trust."

The court is expected to rule by summer.

Mr Newdow, a lawyer, made the rare and usually foolhardy decision to argue his own case before the court. He withstood the justices' vigorous questions.

If the court agrees with Mr Newdow, it could declare the phrase "under God" breaches the figurative wall separating church and state. That then would mean an end to the Pledge of Allegiance.