WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court debated Wednesday whether the government can maintain a cross in a national preserve to honor fallen soldiers or whether an official display of this Christian symbol violates the First Amendment’s ban on an establishment of religion.
But the justices spent most of the hour mired in a side dispute over whether Congress had solved the constitutional problem by transferring the land under the cross to the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
At issue was a cross that sits atop Sunrise Rock in a remote part of the Mojave National Preserve in California, not far from the Nevada border. Since 1934, the cross has been there, in one form or another, as a war memorial. Different court documents refer to it as 5 feet to 8 feet tall.
A decade ago, it came under legal attack from a former National Park Service employee who, though a Catholic himself, thought it was inappropriate to favor one religion over another in the preserve. The park service had turned down a request to have a Buddhist symbol erected nearby.
A federal judge and the 9th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the stand-alone display of the cross in the national preserve was unconstitutional and, further, that the move by Congress to transfer it to the private VFW did not solve the problem.
The Obama administration, joining with the VFW, urged the Supreme Court to uphold the display of the cross now that it is in private hands.
By the end of the hour, it was not clear what issue the justices will decide. They could decide whether the transfer of the cross to the VFW solved the legal problem. Or they could go further back and decide whether it was constitutional to erect the cross on public land.
It will probably be several months before the court hands down a decision in the case, known as Salazar vs. Buono.
