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: Legal Pad | LA

Feds take on war monument, church-state, and donut holes

By Richard Binder

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And that's just one case.

The Supreme Court said today it would decide whether the government can maintain a cross in a national park to honor fallen soldiers in the latest test of church-state separation.

At issue is an 8-foot-tall cross in the Mojave National Preserve in Southern California. It was first erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars in 1934 and has been maintained as a war memorial by the National Park Service. The American Civil Liberties Union objected to the cross and filed a suit on behalf of Frank Bruno, a Catholic and former Park Service employee. The suit noted that the government had denied a request to have a Buddhist shrine erected near the cross.

Two years ago, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the ACLU and declared the cross an "impermissible governmental endorsement of religion."

Congress has intervened to try to save the cross by transferring a small parcel of land with the cross on it to a private group. However, the 9th Circuit judges were unswayed. This "would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve," the appeals court said.

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Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on February 23, 2009 (boomark / email).