Responding to a U.S. Supreme Court case over the rights of public schools to lead the Pledge of Allegiance, the House Judiciary Committee approved legislation last week that would require future legal challenges to the pledge be heard in state courts and not federal ones. The 17-10 vote was along party lines, with Republicans in favor of the Pledge Protection Act and Democrats against. Last June, the Supreme Court reversed on procedural grounds a federal appeals court ruling that had declared public school recitations of the pledge unconstitutional because of the words “under God.”