"Actually, that was from the opinion of Chief Justice Rehnquist, which the majority of the court did not join in."
Again you are wrong, four agreed with the Cheif, and the rest did not state one way or the other, no comment...this was not a "opinion" it was really a viewpoint sice they did not try the case.
Addressing the merits of the pledge issue, Chief Justice Rehnquist said that "reciting the pledge, or listening to others recite it, is a patriotic exercise, not a religious one." In her opinion, Justice O'Connor called the pledge a permissible example of "ceremonial deism" rather than religious worship, similar, she said, to the words the Supreme Court's marshal intones at the start of each session: "God save the United States and this honorable court."
While both Justice O'Connor and Chief Justice Rehnquist found the pledge constitutional under the Supreme Court's existing precedents, Justice Thomas took a different approach (yet still agreed). The court's church-state precedents made the pledge unconstitutional and those precedents should be re-examined, he said.