The U.S. Supreme Court brought two years of pleadings and passion over the Pledge of Allegiance to a crashing anticlimax Monday when it ruled that a Sacramento atheist, who challenged the phrase "under God" in daily recitals in his daughter’s classroom, had no right to sue on her behalf.

The court left the current version of the pledge intact but spurned pleas from opposing sides in the case to decide whether the language violates the constitutional separation of church and state.