5 U.S.C. § 3331
Section 3331 · Oath of office
Amended 1 time on record
Applied in 37 court decisions — leading case Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2004)
Most recently applied in Trump v. CASA, Inc. (June 2025)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath: “I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” This section does not affect other oaths required by law.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
May 13, 1884, ch. 46, §§2, 3, 23 Stat. 22. All but the quoted language in R.S. §1757 is omitted as obsolete since R.S. §1757 was originally an alternative oath to the oath prescribed in R.S. §1756 which oath was repealed by the Act of May 13, 1884, ch. 46, §2, 23 Stat. 22. The words “An individual, except the President, . . . in the civil service or uniformed services” are substituted for “any person . . . either in the civil, military, or naval service, except the President of the United States”. The second sentence of former section 16 is changed to read, “This section does not affect other oaths required by law.”.
Standard changes are made to conform with the definitions applicable and the style of this title as outlined in the preface to the report.