Multiple Appeals Aim to Keep Cross Upright on Mt. Soledad
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
June 27, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to stay a federal judge's order to remove a cross from a San Diego landmark. But a national public interest law firm says the fight to keep the cross atop Mt. Soledad is not over. The latest ruling means the city of San Diego must remove the 29-foot-tall concrete cross at the Mt. Soledad War Memorial by August 1 or face fines of $5,000 a day. The huge cross was erected in 1954 and today is the centerpiece of a national memorial honoring America's veterans. But 17 years ago an atheist sued government officials, claiming the cross -- which stands on city-owned property -- violated the U.S. Constitution, specifically the so-called "separation of church and state."
Rob Muise is a trial counsel with the Thomas More Law Center, which has been involved in the fight to save the cross since 2004. His legal group has filed an emergency motion appealing the panel's decision; that appeal has been expedited by the court, with briefs due by July 19. Muise says other legal options remain. "We have [our own] emergency motion to stay [the cross's removal] also before the Ninth Circuit, and we're still waiting to see what their ruling might be on that," he explains.
The attorney, who himself served 13 years in the Marine Corps and is a veteran of the first Persian Gulf War, says public sentiment strongly favors keeping the cross where it stands.
"I can't tell you the number of phone calls and e-mails that we have received from grieving family members who are just so upset and pained by the fact that this cross is going to come down from a war memorial where they placed a plaque of their fallen hero at the foot of this cross, which is really a symbol of self sacrifice," he says.
In fact, according to a press release from the Law Center, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral (Ret.) Jeremiah Denton, a highly decorated Vietnam War veteran and former POW, has urged President Bush, in a personal letter, to intervene in the matter by exercising the government's power of eminent domain to take the land under federal control and maintain it as a national monument.
In July 2005, more than three-quarters (76 percent) of San Diego voters approved a measure that would have transferred the cross and land on which it stands to the National Park Service. In October, a state judge ruled the proposition unconstitutional. The Law Center has also appealed that ruling by Judge Patricia Yim Cowett.
