The Supreme Court will allow a 94-year-old Latin cross honoring 49 men who died in World War I to remain standing on public land in Maryland, it said Thursday.
The court ruled 7-2 that the cross does not violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
“The Religion Clauses of the Constitution aim to foster a society in which people of all beliefs can live together harmoniously, and the presence of the Bladendsburg Cross on the land where it has stood for so many years is fully consistent with that aim,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority.
Ginsburg, however, wrote in her dissent that the Latin Cross “symbolizes the foundational tenets of Christianity,” and argued that by keeping the Peace Cross on public land, “the state places Christianity above other faiths and conveys a message of exclusion to non-Christians.”
The question before the justices was whether the Peace Cross was unconstitutional because of its shape.
Located in Bladensburg, Md., the Peace Cross was erected by bereaved mothers whose sons died in the Great War. Construction of the memorial began in 1919 and was completed in 1925.
The cross, which stands 40 feet tall, bears on its base the name of 49 men from Prince George’s County who died during World War I. Today, it sits in the median of a bustling intersection on land that, since 1961, has been owned by the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.
Since obtaining ownership of the memorial, the commission has spent $117,000 on repairs and maintenance and has set aside $100,000 for restoration.
The future of the Peace Cross was thrust into uncertainty in 2014 when the American Humanist Association filed a complaint in federal court arguing it was unconstitutional.
The district court disagreed, but a three-judge panel on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s ruling. In its decision, the Richmond-based appeals court said the “purported war memorial breaches the wall of separation between church and state.”
The American Legion, which originally owned the monument, asked the Supreme Court to review the 4th Circuit’s ruling in June. The Peace Cross, the veterans group argued, is solely a war memorial and has only been regarded by the community as such.
The state of Maryland and 30 others, as well as members of Congress and the Trump administration, backed the American Legion in the case. They feared that if the 4th Circuit’s ruling was left in place, similar cross-shaped memorials around the country would be in jeopardy, including two World War I memorials in Arlington National Cemetery.
The fate of those monuments appeared to be a concern for some of the justices at oral arguments in February, during which a majority of the court appeared poised to let the Peace Cross remain.
Alito noted the effect of removing or altering cross-shaped memorials, and said that ordering it to be taken down “would not be viewed by many as a neutral act.” Additionally, Alito suggested that amputating the arms of the cross, as the lower court suggested, “would be seen by many as profoundly disrespectful.”
“The cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol, but that fact should not blind us to everything else that the Bladensburg Cross has come to represent,” Alito wrote. “For some, that monument is a symbolic resting place for ancestors who never returned home. For others, it is a place for the community to gather and honor all veterans and their sacrifices for our nation.”
“For others still, it is a historical landmark. For many of these people, destroying or defacing the Cross that has stood undisturbed for nearly a century would not be neutral and would not further the ideals of respect and tolerance embodied in the First Amendment,” he added. “For all these reasons, the Cross does not offend the Constitution.”
While Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas agreed the World War I memorial does not violate the Constitution, both said the case should’ve been dismissed, as simply being offended by the Peace Cross did not give the American Humanist Association the legal right to sue.
“In a large and diverse country, offense can be easily found. Really, most every governmental action probably offends somebody,” Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion, which Thomas joined. “No doubt, too, that offense can be sincere, sometimes well taken, even wise. But recourse for disagreement and offense does not lie in federal litigation. Instead, in a society that holds among its most cherished ambitions mutual respect, tolerance, self-rule, and democratic responsibility, an ‘offended viewer’ may ‘avert his eyes’ or pursue a political solution.”
Brett Reistad, national commander of the American Legion, praised the ruling from the Supreme Court, saying, “To my fellow veterans: Mission accomplished!”
In today’s Examining Politics podcast. Larry O’Connor talks to Ken Klukowski of First Liberty Institute who had a huge win in SCOTUS today for religious liberty with the famous Bladensburg Cross case.
