The decision was not overturned by SCOTUS it was thrown back into the system. They basically said that the atheist father was not able to bring the case on behalf of his daughter and to go get more plaintiffs.
Basically, SCOTUS side-stepped the issue.
The fact-of-the-matter remains that when a public school REQUIRES the recital of the Pledge of Allegience it IS unconstitional due to the fact that the school is a part of the government and paid for by the people.
That is untrue. The idea that the First Amendment prohibits states from compelling the Pledge of Allegiance or even from establishing their own official state religions is probably the most easily proved lie of the many the Supreme Court has issued through the years.
The First Amendment, as made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth...commands that a state 'shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'
--Justice Hugo Black, Everson v. Bd of Education of Ewing Twp., 330 U.S. 1 (1947)
This declaration by the Supreme Court was the first time it informed everyone that the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment was applicable to the states. Before that time, state-religion issues were not the province of the US Constitution or the federal courts. But was the Supreme Court right? Did the 14th Amendment make the Establishment Clause applicable to the states?
Go back to 1875 (7 years after the 14th Amendment was ratified)...President Grant asks Congressman James Blaine to introduce a proposed amendment that will provide in part:
No state shall make any law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
The Blaine Amendment (which would have been the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution passes the House but fails in the Senate. Senator Frelinghuysen of NJ, in introducing the amendment in the Senate states:
The [Blaine Amendment] very properly extends the prohibition of the first amendment of the Constitution to the States. Thus the [Blaine Amendment] prohibits the States, for the first time, from the establishment of religion, from prohibiting its free exercise, and from making any religious test a qualification to office.
Senator Eaton of Connecticut, in objecting to the Blaine Amendment states, on the Senate floor:
I am opposed to any State prohibiting the free exercise of any religion; and I do not require the Senate or the Congress of the United States to assist me in taking care of the State of Connecticut in that regard.
Senator Whyte agreed:
The first amendment to the Constitution prevents the establishment of religion by congressional enactment; it prohibits the interference of Congress with the free exercise thereof, and leaves the whole power for the propagation of it with the States exclusively; and so far as I am concerned I propose to leave it there also.
The Congressional record during the debates over the Blaine Amendment shows that not one member of Congress...many of whom were in the Congress that passed the 14th Amendment or the state legislatures that ratified it...not a single one...mentioned that the Blaine Amendment was unnecessary...it seems that none of the Congressmen who ratified the 14th Amendment knew that they thereby incorporated the Establishment Clause against the states...the Everson case must be another fine example of Constitutional fiction...I mean..."interpretation"