A 40-Foot Cross Has Honored War Dead for 90 Years. Is It Unlawful?
By EMILY BAUMGAERTNEROCT. 29, 2017 BLADENSBURG, Md. — Five miles from the United States Supreme Court, a 40-foot-tall World War I memorial in the shape of a cross has stood for nearly a century. Now, it is at the center of a battle over the separation of church and state that may end up on the court’s docket.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit declared this month that the Peace Cross, which sits on state-owned land in Maryland and has been maintained with public funds, was unconstitutional, a ruling that supporters of the monument warned could result in a “cleansing” of memorials on public grounds across the country.
An appeal would provide the justices an opportunity to weigh in on increasingly common disputes over religious symbols on government property. Scholars hope the case will further distill what is and is not an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
The Peace Cross, which commemorates 49 fallen soldiers from Prince George’s County, looms over the knotted intersection of Maryland Route 450 and United States Alternate Route 1 in this old port town of 10,000 people. When the sun rises, the cross casts a shadow toward the bank of the Anacostia River, and when it sets, toward an industrial lot housing a King Pawn shop and a boarded-up Kelley’s Muffler.
The monument was erected in 1925 with funding from local families and the American Legion, but the state obtained title to the cross and land in 1961, and has spent at least $117,000 to maintain them.
In a 2-to-1 ruling, the three-judge panel declared that the Peace Cross violated the First Amendment by having “a primary effect of endorsing religion and excessively entangles the government and religion.”
Douglas Laycock, a religious liberties scholar and professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, praised the decision.
The cross “asserts the truth of one religion and, implicitly but necessarily, the falsehood of all other religions,” he said. “Its secondary meanings, as in honoring war dead, are entirely derivative of its primary meaning as a symbol of the Resurrection.”
If the Fourth Circuit denies a request for the full court to reconsider the panel’s decision, defenders of the monument vow to take the case to the Supreme Court. They argue that the ruling sets a dangerous precedent, threatening national treasures such as the 24-foot Canadian Cross of Sacrifice and 13-foot Argonne Cross in Arlington National Cemetery — both within the Fourth Circuit’s jurisdiction — as well as the ground zero “cross,” the steel beams discovered among World Trade Center debris now on display in the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
“It is brooding hostility toward religion, a sort of cleansing,” said Kelly Shackelford, the president of First Liberty Institute, one of the legal groups aiding the American Legion in defending the cross. “We would immediately need to begin massive bulldozing and sandblasting of veterans memorials across the country in a way that most people would find inconceivable.” . . .
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/29/us/politics/peace-cross-maryland-court-first-amendment.html
So much for the separation of church and state. Instead of separating itself, the Fourth Circuit has decided to characterize this as a religious issue, and butt itself right into the middle of a State issue.
