Mayor orders man removed after he didn't stand for Pledge of Allegiance

[Ms. Toad]

93. You are not reading very carefully.

I said, "Your condescending comments to the poster whose position I started defending were out of line."

You said to that poster, "The Pledge of Allegiance has nothing to do with sworn oath to uphold the constitution...You're showing your ignorance."

As I said, that comment was pretty condescending, especially since that poster was correct. I figured I'd point out where I had already provided the constitutional analysis, you'd say, "Oops - sorry - my bad" and be done with it.

If you don't like my analysis, here's pretty much the same from organizations which routinely win cases at the Supreme Court, using some of the same cases you seem to think are irrelevant - the Freedom From Religion Foundation:

The First Amendment guarantees religious freedom and speech. Additionally, section 3 of Florida’s state constitution explicitly demands a strict separation between the state and its subdivisions and religion. While schools do require that the pledge be recited in public school classrooms, Rees is incorrect on the requirements. Students have the right to sit quietly if they do not wish to participate. In a 1942 case on this exact question, the U.S. Supreme Court held that students cannot be coerced into reciting or standing for the pledge. Justice Robert H. Jackson wrote in his majority opinion that “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/08/31/3477694/florida-mayor-ejects-citizen/
Complete analysis

And the ACLU

The mayor of Winter Garden was wrong to require Richardson to stand, said Baylor Johnson, spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

"People are not required to participate in the Pledge of Allegiance or a sectarian prayer or any kind of compulsory expression just to attend a public meeting," he said.

"The problem with telling people they have to participate in any mandatory expression is that it tells people who might have a religious objection or other deeply held belief that, if they don't go along with what the government tells them to do, they aren't welcome in this community."

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-mayor-tosses-man-for-not-standing-for-pledge-of-20140829,0,80941.story

If my analysis is so screwy, spurious, and off base, don't you think it is a bit unusual that entities whose primary role in life is winning First Amendment cases are saying the same thing?

I'm frankly baffled that someone who was sworn to uphold the constitution has so little knowledge of the basic court structure in this country (that Supreme Court decisions control the decision of all lower courts), of government structure (that, regardless of how the municipality is organized, all municipalities are political subdivisions of the state - and are subject to the First Amendment through the Fourteenth Amendment), and that the First Amendment is also applicable to executive officials (the Mayor) when he is acting in his official capacity (as opposed to acting as a private citizen). The Mayor does not have to be enforcing a law to infringe an individual's first amendment rights.

You are not getting the answers you think are relevant, because your underlying assumptions (noted above) are faulty. When I gave you the best law possible, you asked me to provide legally irrelevant lower court decisions. Now you are suggesting that unless I can point you to a law the mayor's demands represent, his actions didn't violate the First Amendment. The mayor's demands don't represent a law. The mayor is an executive officer. When he acts in his elected capacity, in constitutional terms, his actions are the actions of the state, whether he is acting in accordance with a law - or on a whim of his own. Just because you believe a law is required to bring his actions under the First Amendment doesn't make it so.

At this point, I'll let an editorial writer express my opinion, in the context of another mayor who acted from her gut before consulting town counsel:

The Mayor of Weymouth, Sue Kay, is in a controversy over her removal of the Tinytown Gazette from the Whipple Senior Center. As reported in The Patriot Ledger, she banned the paper from the building after an editorial in which the author stated that the Mayor and town councilors were going to get a raise, which she says was inaccurate and a misrepresentation.

The author of the editorial in question stated that Kay and the Weymouth town councilors were going to get pay raises. According to Kay, this misrepresentation by the author was irresponsible and the reason why she ordered the papers removed. According to Kay, she was “letting [her] emotions get involved in [her] judgment.” Kay said that only after talking to the town’s Solicitor did she realize that her actions violated the First Amendment.
...

The only other option is not much better for the Mayor. The second possibility is that she knows nothing about the U.S. Constitution. If she knew even the basic principles behind it, she would have known that her action was unconstitutional. Assuming that she is telling the truth, then she does not know the basic principles behind the supreme law of the country which as an elected official she is bound to follow. This possibility may be even worse than the first.

There is not any other realistic possibility for the Mayor’s actions in this case. Either she knew full well that her actions were unconstitutional or she knows nothing about the Constitution. Either way, both of these possibilities do not look good for the Mayor. If someone is going to be the Mayor of a town, he or she must know the laws he or she is supposed to enforce and respect them enough not to violate them.

http://bluemassgroup.com/2011/02/mayor-of-weymouth-violates-first-amendment/

But, having dug yourself in this deep I doubt you will ever acknowledge that you are mistaken. So all there is left to say is that I hope before you run for office again, you do some serious brushing up on the Constitution, as it applies to local governments.