Supreme Court upholds cross on public land
Monument honors World War I dead
WASHINGTON — A 40-foot-tall World War I memorial cross can continue to stand on public land in Maryland, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in an important decision about the use of religious symbols in American life.
The justices said preserving a long-standing religious monument is very different from allowing the building of a new one. And the court concluded that the nearly 100-year-old memorial’s presence on a grassy highway median doesn’t violate the Constitution’s prohibition on the government favoring one religion over others. Seven of the court’s nine justices sided with the cross’s backers, a lineup that crossed ideological lines.
The case had been closely watched for its potential impact on other monuments. Defenders of the cross in Bladensburg, a suburb of the nation’s capital, had argued that a ruling against them could doom hundreds of war memorials that use crosses to commemorate soldiers who died.
But the case was also seen as an indication of how far the court’s conservative majority would be willing to go in approving religious symbols in public life. In the end, a majority of the justices signed on to a relatively narrow ruling, declining to go as far as they had been urged to by some of the cross’s defenders.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a majority opinion for himself and four colleagues that “when time’s passage imbues a religiously expressive monument, symbol or practice with this kind of familiarly and historical significance, removing It may no longer appear neutral.”
“A government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the divine will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion,” Alito wrote
Alito also wrote that the Maryland cross’s connection to World War I was important in upholding it because crosses, which marked the graves of American soldiers, became a symbol closely linked to the war.
Two of the court’s liberal justices, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, both of whom are Jewish, joined their conservative colleagues in ruling for the memorial, which on its base lists the names of 49 area residents who died in World War I.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, with Ginsburg writing that “the principal symbol of Christianity around the world should not loom over public thoroughfares, suggesting official recognition of that religion’s paramountcy.” Ginsburg read a summary of her dissent in court, a way of expressing deep disagreement. Ginsburg is the only other justice on the court who is Jewish. The others are Christian.
In all, seven justices wrote to explain their views in opinions that totaled some 80 pages, an indication of the depth of feeling the case provoked as well as differences in the justices’ positions.