In 1984, several liberal members of the Supreme Court, including Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens and William Brennan, said references like ``In God We Trust,'' which appears on United States currency and coins, were protected from the Establishment Clause because their religious significance had been lost through rote repetition.
The dissenting judge in today's ruling, Ferdinand F. Fernandez, 63, who was appointed to the bench in 1989 by President Bush's father, expressed concerns that ruling could also be applied to other expressions of patriotism. ``We will soon find ourselves prohibited from using our album of patriotic songs in many public settings,'' he wrote. ```God Bless America' and `America the Beautiful' will be gone for sure, and while the first and second stanzas of `The Star-Spangled Banner' will still be permissible, we will be precluded from straying into the third.'' [New York Times]
