Page:United States Reports, Volume 542.djvu/77

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Fifty years have passed since the words "under God" were added, a span of time that is not inconsiderable given the relative youth of our Nation. In that time, the Pledge has become, alongside the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner, our most routine ceremonial act of patriotism; countless schoolchildren recite it daily, and their religious heterogeneity reﬂects that of the Nation as a whole. As a result, the Pledge and the context in which it is employed are familiar and nearly inseparable in the public mind. No reasonable observer could have been surprised to learn the words of the Pledge, or that petitioner school district has a policy of lead ing its students in daily recitation of the Pledge.

It cannot be doubted that "no one acquires a vested or protected right in violation of the Constitution by long use, even when that span of time covers our entire national existence and indeed predates it. Yet an unbroken practice is not something to be lightly cast aside." Walz v. Tax Comm'n of City of New York,, 678 (1970). And the history of a given practice is all the more relevant when the practice has been employed pervasively without engendering significant controversy. In Lynch, where we evaluated the constitutionality of a town Christmas display that included a creche, we found relevant to the endorsement question the fact that the display had "apparently caused no political divisiveness prior to the ﬁling of this lawsuit" despite its use for over 40 years. See 465 U.S., at 692–693. Similarly, in the 50 years that the Pledge has been recited as it is now, by millions of children, this was, at the time of its filing, only the third reported case of which I am aware to