There is a constitutional fight brewing over whether the Memorial Peace Cross must be removed from the side of the road in the small town of Bladensburg, Md. The 40-foot cross was erected in 1925 by the local chapter of the American Legion to honor 49 soldiers who had died in World War I. When the cross was first put in place, it was located on private property. The land it sits on was later transferred to a governmental agency, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, as part of a 1960 road-improvement plan.

Now, the American Humanist Association, an organization that represents atheists and other “non-theists,” is claiming that the presence of the cross on governmental property constitutes an unconstitutional establishment of religion and is asking the commission to take it down.