In October, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a Writ of Certiorari to the case Elk Grove Unified School Dist. v. Newdow, the famous case from two summers ago in which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. The argument will take place on March 24. Upon granting the Writ of Certiorari (which means that the Court agrees to hear the case), the Supreme Court outlines key issues with which the case deals. These are called "Questions Presented," and Newdow presents two of them:

1. Whether respondent Newdow has standing to challenge as unconstitutional a public school district policy that requires teachers to lead willing students in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
2. Whether a public school district policy that requires teachers to lead willing students in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, which includes the words "under God," violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, as applicable through the Fourteenth Amendment.

With regard to the first question, the Court will probably rule that a teacher in a public school cannot be compelled to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. The second issue is trickier, and I have no idea how the court will rule. Either way, someone is going to be very unhappy. If the court rules in favor of Newdow, it will be all the more cause for House Republicans (and some Democrats) to pass their lunatic bills stripping the Supreme Court of any kind of power at all. It will cause religious people everywhere (Jews have also jumped on board in defense of the school district, as have Muslims, I suspect -- it's all the same god to them) to raise a gigantic stink about atheism and the loss of morals in contemporary America.

The following are links to the Reply Brief for the United States, the Respondent's [Newdow's] Brief, the Reply Brief for Elk Grove Unified School District, and the original opinion from 2002 (also called Newdow v. U.S. Congress, et al., 00-16423). Note that the Justice Department filed an amici curiae ("friend of the court") brief on behalf of the school district.