16, 17. What issue did Lillian and William Gobitas face, and what have you learned from their case?

¹⁶ United States. In 1940, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 against Jehovah’s Witnesses in the case known as Minersville School District v. Gobitis. Lillian Gobitas,f aged 12, and her brother William, aged 10, wanted to remain loyal to Jehovah, so they refused to salute the flag or recite the pledge. As a result, they were expelled from school. Their case came before the Supreme Court, and the Court concluded that the school’s actions were constitutional because they were in the interest of “national unity.” That ruling ignited a firestorm of persecution. More Witness children were expelled from school, adult Witnesses lost their jobs, and a number of Witnesses suffered vicious attacks from mobs. The book The Lustre of Our Country states that the “persecution of Witnesses from 1941 to 1943 was the greatest outbreak of religious intolerance in twentieth-century America.”