Topic: Michael Newdow

Michael Arthur Newdow (born June 24, 1953) is an American attorney and emergency medicine physician. He is best known for his efforts to have recitations of the current version of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools in the United States declared unconstitutional because of its inclusion of the phrase "under God". Most recently, he filed a lawsuit to prevent references to God and religion from being part of President Obama's inauguration.

Newdow is an atheist and an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church. In 1997, he started an organization called FACTS (First Amendment Church of True Science), which advocates strong separation of church and state in public institutions.

Newdow grew up in the Bronx and Teaneck, New Jersey, from where his nominally Jewish family moved in 1960. He graduated from Teaneck High School. He told Brown Alumni Magazine that he can’t remember ever believing in God, saying, "I was born an atheist."