Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Case On Cross On Federal Land

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a case involving a cross placed as a war memorial in the Mojave Desert.

From the Associated Baptist Press:

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could lead to the first major church-state decision under the panel’s current makeup.

The justices announced Feb. 23 they would hear Salazar v. Buono (No. 08-472). The case involves a cross -- a predecessor of which was first erected as a World War I memorial in 1934 -- standing on government-owned land in California’s Mojave National Preserve.

The current version was built of painted metal pipes by a local resident in 1998. The next year the National Park Service, which oversees the land, denied an application to build a Buddhist shrine near the cross.

The agency studied the history of the monument and, determining that it did not qualify as a historic landmark, announced plans to remove it. Congress intervened with a series of amendments to spending bills attempting to preserve the cross.

In 2001 Frank Buono, a former Park Service employee who once worked at the preserve, filed suit with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. They claimed that the cross violated the Constitution’s ban on government establishment of religion.

Some has expressed concern that if the Supreme Court rules against the cross memorial that all crosses (or other religious symbols) will be banned from headstones in national cemeteries.

I seriously doubt that any decision against this memorial will have any effect on veterans' headstones, but crazier things can happen in today's political climate.