Court bans Christian cross on private land in public park - Reuters

Court bans Christian cross on private land in public park
Thu Sep 6, 2007 3:59PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The U.S. government cannot
trade a parcel of land to private hands to allow a
Christian cross to remain in the middle of a vast federal
preserve, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.

At issue is the Establishment Clause of the U.S.
Constitution, which bars the government from favoring
any one religion, as it applies to a lone white metal
Latin cross in the Mojave National Preserve in southern
California between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

In 2004, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled
that a cross on a prominent rock on public land was
unconstitutional, prompting Congress to pass a law
allowing a trade so its immediate area would become
private land.

People have been putting crosses in the spot since the
1930s, most recently with one man drilling a metal cross
into the rock a decade ago without permission. In 1999,
a man requested and was denied permission to build a
Buddhist shrine there, setting the stage for a tangled
legal fight.

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