Decision of the Case

This Court cannot exercise censorship over the conviction of legislatures that a particular program or exercise will best promote in the minds of children who attend the common schools an attachment to the institutions of their country, nor overrule the local judgment against granting exemptions from observance of such a program.

CERTIORARI, 309 U.S. 645, to review the affirmance of a decree (24 F.Supp. 271; opinion, 21 F.Supp. 581) which perpetually enjoined the above-named School District, the members of its board of education, and its superintendent of public schools from continuing to enforce an order expelling from the public schools certain minors (suing in this case by their father as next friend), and from [p587] requiring them to salute the national flag as a condition to their right to attend. [p591]

Fourteenth Amendment: Section 1 states: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment14/

“Although the drafters of the federal Constitution were men of vision, they could not, of course, foresee the changing needs of our country and its people in the years that were to follow. The constitution has been amended, or changed, 27 times, and it will probably continue to be amended.” Anthony L. Luizzo, J.D., Ph.D. Published by McGraw-Hill, Essentials of Business Law, pg 5