The California atheist whose effort to strip the phrase “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance was rebuffed by the U.S. Supreme Court three years ago has joined two parents to pursue the same legal battle.

Michael Newdow is now representing an anonymous New Hampshire couple who filed a suit last week in the U.S. District Court against a Hanover school district for leading their children in reciting the Pledge with phrase “under God.”

The couple, only identified as "Jan and Pat Doe,” contend in their lawsuit that the two-word phrase, which they describe as “sectarian religious dogma,” should be declared unconstitutional.

"By placing the religious words 'under God' into the Pledge, Congress not only interfered with the patriotism and national unity the Pledge was meant to engender, but it actually fostered divisiveness . . . in a manner expressly forbidden by the Constitution,” the suit states.

the two plaintiffs still believe that by including the phrase into the pledge, the district is “endorsing the religious notion that God exists” and thereby creates a “societal environment where prejudice against atheists … is perpetuated,” according to the suit.

The Hanover case represents only one of a string of attempts by Newdow to challenge the pledge.

Their case involves a dispute that has simmered since 1954, when Congress and President Eisenhower added the words "under God" to the United States' Pledge of Allegiance, after years of lobbying by Christian groups.

Two years later, in 1956, Congress adopted "In God We Trust" as the country's official motto. Newdow has also challenged that phrase, printed on all U.S. currency, but courts have rebuffed him by ruling the phrase has no religious significance.

The U.S. Supreme Court dodged the divine bullet in 2004, when it ruled Newdow had no standing to challenge the law on behalf of his daughter because he wasn't the custodial parent.

Justice Clarence Thomas and former justices William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor made clear in concurring opinions that they had no problem with mentions of God in public ceremonies or the Pledge. The justices argued merely invoking God does not amount to an endorsement of any religion.

Ceremonial deism is a legal term used in the United States for nominally religious statements and practices deemed to be merely ritual and non-religious through long customary usage. Proposed examples of ceremonial deism include the reference to God introduced into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and the phrase "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency.

The term was coined in 1962 by the then-dean of Yale Law School, Eugene Rostow, and has been used since 1963 by the Supreme Court of the United States to assess exemptions from the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Neither of the above two examples have yet been ruled upon by the Supreme Court.

[F]iling in all 12 federal Circuits is overly-ambitious and inadvisable. Some of the Circuits are quite hostile to pro-separationist positions and it is virtually certain that we would lose in these Circuits. We've already lost this very issue in the 7th Circuit in the Sherman case; a district court in that Circuit, and a subsequent panel, is going to be bound by that decision. Similarly, I do not think the 3rd Circuit is a good Circuit for church-state issues. They recently decided a bad Ten Commandments case and have recently issued other bad rulings as well. Other Circuits (e.g., the 1st, 2nd, 6th, and 9th) are much more favorable to pro-separationist positions. Furthermore, it's impossible to litigate 12 cases well; the strategy will necessarily entail doing a less-then-perfect job in all of the cases.

The Secular Coalition for America opposes government-coerced recitation of the religious Pledge of Allegiance by public school children. Our community is relegated to second-class citizenship when patriotic exercises require an affirmation of supernatural belief.