Quaker Teacher Fired For Seeking to Modify Loyalty Oath

As reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, California State University - East Bay has fired a Quaker instructor who refused to sign a required loyalty oath unless she could amend the oath to conform to her religious beliefs. The oath states:

I, ________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.      

Marianne Kearney-Brown, who had just begun teaching remedial math part-time, sought to strike "swear"  and to insert the word "non-violently" before "support of defend".  Kearney-Brown had previously taught math for many years in California public schools and had made identical modifications to the terms of the oath with no objection by the relevant school boards.

A representative of the California Attorney General's Office quoted in the Chronicle article indicated that, as a general matter, an oath could usually be modified "to conform to individual values".  However, the termination letter sent to Kearney-Brown by Cal State-East Bay stated that the institution could not "permit attachments or addenda that are incompatible and inconsistent with the oath", citing a 1968 state appellate court opinion in Smith v. County Engineer of San Diego County, 266 Cal.App.2d 645, 72 Cal.Rptr. 501(1968), which upheld the denial of public employment to an applicant who sought to revise the oath by declaring "supreme allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ Whom Almighty God has appointed ruler of nations, and expressing my dissent from the failure of the Constitution to recognize Christ and acknowledge the Divine institution of civil government."    

In Connell v. Higginbotham, 403 U.S. 207 (1971) and Cole v. Richardson, 405 U.S. 676 (1972), the U.S. Supreme Court has distinguished oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution and to a state constitution from public employment loyalty oaths that required denial of membership in certain political organizations and advocacy groups. It would be interesting to learn how many public entities now require the execution of such an oath and for what classes of employment it is used.

JFB