SAN DIEGO (ABP) — Supporters of a controversial cross on government land in San Diego won the latest round in a lengthy war over the monument Feb. 21.
The California Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a lower state court's decision upholding the Mount Soledad cross. The move leaves intact a ruling that said a 2005 vote to transfer the land under the monument to the federal government was legal.
Moving the cross to federal jurisdiction was a bid to protect the 29-foot-high monument, located prominently at the crest of an 800-foot hill in a city-owned park. It has been at the center of a legal dispute for 17 years.
President Bush signed a bill into law last year that included a little-noticed provision designed to make it easier for the cross to remain on public land.
The California court's move to decline the appeal was hailed by cross supporters as the effective end of state-court legislation over the monument's constitutionality.
The legal saga began in 1989, when a local atheist and Vietnam veteran, Phillip Paulson, sued the city for removal of the structure. He argued that the monument was intended as a religious symbol and that its prominence in a city park suggests unconstitutional government preference for Christianity.
Paulson died of cancer in October but reportedly asked a friend, Steven Trunk, to join the lawsuit so the legal action may continue.
Attorneys for the city have argued the monolith is simply a monument to veterans. Although some version of a cross has stood on the spot for the past century, the present version was dedicated as a Korean War memorial on Easter Sunday in 1954. It gradually came to include plaques and walls with the names of casualties from the Korean conflict and other wars.
Paulson's attorneys have argued, however, that the private group that maintains the site did not add the commemorative elements until after the lawsuit was filed and that the cross continues to play a prominent role in Christian worship services.
Although Paulson and Trunk's complaint about the cross's sale has now exhausted its options in California courts, a similar lawsuit is pending in the federal court system.
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Read more:
House passes bill attempting to intervene in cross dispute (7/20/2006)