Monday, June 14, 1943. Flag Day and Constitutional Rights.

It was Flag Day for 1943.

Perhaps for that reason, the U.S. Supreme Court chose this day to release its opinion in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943), which found that compulsory flag salutes were unconstitutional.  This had the effect of overruling Minersville School District v. Gobitis from 1940.

The Court also turned around a conviction a mere 13 days after hearing oral arguments.

BUSEY ET AL.

v.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

No. 235.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued June 1, 1943.

Decided June 14, 1943.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

Mr. Hayden C. Covington for petitioners.

Mr. Vernon E. West, with whom Mr. Richmond B. Keech was on the brief, for respondent.

580*580 PER CURIAM.

In this case petitioners, who are Jehovah's Witnesses, were convicted of selling, on the streets of the District of Columbia, magazines which expound their religious views, without first procuring the license and paying the license tax required by § 47-2336 of the District of Columbia Code (1940). In affirming the conviction the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia below had two questions before it: whether the statute was applicable to petitioners, and if so whether its application as to them infringed the First Amendment. The court construed the statute as applicable and sustained its constitutionality (75 U.S. App. D.C. 352, 129 F.2d 24), following the decision in Cole v. Fort Smith, 202 Ark. 614, 151 S.W.2d 1000, the judgment in which was affirmed by this Court in Bowden v. Fort Smith, 316 U.S. 584, one of the cases argued together with Jones v. Opelika, 316 U.S. 584. Since the decision below, and after hearing reargument in the Opelika case, we have vacated our earlier judgment and held the license tax imposed in that case to be unconstitutional. Jones v. Opelika, 319 U.S. 103; Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105. Petitioners urge us to construe the District of Columbia statute as inapplicable in order to avoid the constitutional infirmity which might otherwise exist — an infirmity conceded by respondent on the oral argument before us. In view of our decisions in the Opelika and Murdock cases, we vacate the judgment in this case and remand the cause to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to enable it to reexamine its rulings on the construction and validity of the District ordinance in the light of those decisions. Cf. New York ex rel. Whitman v. Wilson, 318 U.S. 688, 690-691, and cases cited.

So ordered.

MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

Franklin Roosevelt addressed the nation by radio.

Today on Flag Day we celebrate the declaration of the United Nations—that great alliance dedicated to the defeat of our foes and to the establishment of a true peace based on the freedom of man. Today the Republic of Mexico and the Commonwealth of the Philippine Islands join us. We welcome these valiant peoples to the company of those who fight for freedom.

The four freedoms of common humanity are as much elements of man's needs as air and sunlight, bread and salt. Deprive him of all these freedoms and he dies—deprive him of a part of them and a part of him withers. Give them to him in full and abundant measure and he will cross the threshold of a new age, the greatest age of man.

These freedoms are the rights of men of every creed and every race, wherever they live. This is their heritage, long withheld. We of the United Nations have the power and the men and the will at last to assure man's heritage.

The belief in the four freedoms of common humanity—the belief in man, created free, in the image of God- is the crucial difference between ourselves and the enemies we face today. In it lies the absolute unity of our alliance, opposed to the oneness of the evil we hate. Here is our strength, the source and promise of victory.

We of the United Nations know that our faith cannot be broken by any man or any force. And we know that there are other millions who in their silent captivity share our belief.

We ask the German people, still dominated by their Nazi whipmasters, whether they would rather have the mechanized hell of Hitler's "New" Order or—in place of that, freedom of speech and religion, freedom from want and from fear.

We ask the Japanese people, trampled by their savage lords of slaughter, whether they would rather continue slavery and blood or—in place of them, freedom of speech and religion, freedom from want and from fear.

We ask the brave, unconquered people of the Nations the Axis invaders have dishonored and despoiled whether they would rather yield to conquerors or—have freedom of speech and religion, freedom from want and from fear.

We know the answer. They know the answer. We know that man, born to freedom in the image of God, will not forever suffer the oppressors' sword. The peoples of the United Nations are taking that sword from the oppressors' hands. With it they will destroy those tyrants. The brazen tyrannies pass. Man marches forward toward the light.

I am going to close by reading you a prayer that has been written for the United Nations on this Day:

"God of the free, we pledge our hearts and lives today to the cause of all free mankind.

"Grant us victory over the tyrants who would enslave all free men and Nations. Grant us faith and understanding to cherish all those who fight for freedom as if they were our brothers. Grant us brotherhood in hope and union, not only for the space of this bitter war, but for the days to come which shall and must unite all the children of earth.

"Our earth is but a small star in the great universe. Yet of it we can make, if we choose, a planet unvexed by war, untroubled by hunger or fear, undivided by senseless distinctions of race, color, or theory. Grant us that courage and foreseeing to begin this task today that our children and our children's children may be proud of the name of man.

"The spirit of man has awakened and the soul of man has gone forth. Grant us the wisdom and the vision to comprehend the greatness of man's spirit, that suffers and endures so hugely for a goal beyond his own brief span. Grant us honor for our dead who died in the faith, honor for our living who work and strive for the faith, redemption and security for all captive lands and peoples. Grant us patience with the deluded and pity for the betrayed. And grant us the skill and the valor that shall cleanse the world of oppression and the old base doctrine that the strong must eat the weak because they are strong.

"Yet most of all grant us brotherhood, not only for this day but for all our years- a brotherhood not of words but of acts and deeds. We are all of us children of earth—grant us that simple knowledge. If our brothers are oppressed, then we are oppressed. If they hunger, we hunger. If their freedom is taken away, our freedom is not secure. Grant us a common faith that man shall know bread and peace-that he shall know justice and righteousness, freedom and security, an equal opportunity and an equal chance to do his best, not only in our own lands, but throughout the world. And in that faith let us march, toward the clean world our hands can make. Amen."

"Quantum", an American scientist, turned over secret information about operating U-235 from Uranium to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C.

The Venona Files reveal Quantum to have been Russian-born Boris Podolsky, who emigrated from Russia in 1913.

Communist related, on this day Earl Browder, General Secretary of the Communist Party USA began correspondence with Franklin Roosevelt regarding Argentine leftist Victorio Codovilla, whom that country was threatening to deport to Spain.