АҚШ Жоғарғы Сотының «Барнет» ісі: Бірінші түзету және туға құрмет көрсету мәселесі

West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court holding that the First Amendment protects students from being compelled to salute the American flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. Barnette overruled a 1940 decision on the same issue, Minersville School District v. Gobitis, in which the Supreme Court ruled that such laws were valid because they had been passed by elected legislators. The Barnette ruling was a significant victory for Jehovah's Witnesses, whose religion forbade them from saluting or pledging to symbols, including those of political institutions. The ruling is also influential for its focus on freedom of speech principles rather than freedom of religion.

In the 1930s, the president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania, Joseph Franklin Rutherford, began objecting to state laws requiring school students to salute the flag as a means of instilling patriotism, and in 1936 he declared that baptized Jehovah's Witnesses who saluted the flag were breaking their covenant with God and were committing idolatry, per a passage in the Book of Exodus. In several reported incidents during this period, children of Jehovah's Witnesses had been expelled from schools for refusing to salute the American flag or recite the Pledge of Allegiance. One such expulsion resulted in the Supreme Court case Minersville School District v. Gobitis in 1940, in which the High Court sided with school districts and advised dissenting parents to try to change procedures via standard political processes. Failure to comply was considered "insubordination" and dealt with by expulsion from school; the expelled student would then be considered a delinquent, and their parents could be fined up to $50 (about $1000 in 2020 dollars) and jailed up to thirty days. Marie and Gathie Barnett (whose surname was spelled incorrectly in the court documents) were Jehovah's Witnesses attending Slip Hill Grade School near Charleston, and were instructed by their father not to salute the flag or recite the pledge. They were expelled for their refusal. Their parents continued to send the girls to school each day, only for the school to send them back home. The Barnett family filed suit in the District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, alleging that the regulation violated the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the freedoms of speech and religion under the First Amendment. The District Court enjoined enforcement against students who refused to participate in the daily pledge. Due to the case's constitutional implications, the West Virginia School Board appealed directly to the United States Supreme Court.

At the Supreme Court, the School Board argued that the matter was specific to West Virginia law and that the Barnetts had raised no substantial federal question. The Board's argument relied upon the Gobitis precedent. The American Bar Association and the American Civil Liberties Union filed amicus curiae briefs arguing that Gobitis was bad law and should be overruled.

The Supreme Court's ruling Barnette is considered a crucial precedent on the freedoms established by the Bill of Rights and the risk of governments restricting them via discriminatory laws. It is considered to be a formative precedent on not just freedom of religion; but also on the matter of compelled speech, as governments attempt to coerce citizens into taking oaths when they would not do so under their own free will, particularly for religious reasons. In a 2006 commemorative event cosponsored by the Justice Robert H. Jackson Center and the Supreme Court Historical Society, Supreme Court law clerks who had been present at the Barnette ruling appeared on a panel with Marie and Gathie Barnett. Gathie noted that – just as she and her sister had been in 1942 – her son had later been sent to the principal's office for not saluting the flag.