John Boehner, meet West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

For charging attorney Danny Lampley with criminal contempt and putting him behind bars for refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, a 2011 Jefferson Muzzle goes to… Mississippi State Court Judge Talmadge Littlejohn.

In June 2010, when attorney Danny Lampley declined Mississippi State Court Judge Talmadge Littlejohn’s direction to join a group recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in Littlejohn’s courtroom, he was asked to leave the courtroom. Lampley did so, returning after the recitation. In October 2010, Lampley was again in Judge Littlejohn’s courtroom when those assembled were instructed to stand and recite the Pledge. Lampley stood, but refused to utter the words. As a result, the attorney was sent to Lee County Jail, where he remained locked up for almost five hours. Judge Littlejohn’s order stated: “Be it remembered, this date, the Court having ordered all present in the courtroom to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and having found that Danny Lampley, Attorney at Law, failed and refused to do so, finds said Danny Lampley to be in criminal contempt of court…Lampley shall purge himself of said criminal contempt by complying with the order of this Court by standing and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in open court.”

In 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was a violation of the free speech clause of the First Amendment to require children in public schools to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Yet the principle of the Court’s decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette extends far beyond the Pledge. Not only does the First Amendment protect the right to express one’s opinions; it prohibits the government from forcing citizens to espouse any particular view of “politics, nationalism, religion or other matters of opinion.” Commenting on the incarceration of Danny Lampley, Mississippi civil rights lawyer Rob McDuff said, “Judges are supposed to enforce the Bill of Rights, not violate it in their own courtrooms.”