Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/18pdf/17-1717_4f14.pdf
Page Number: 28

Cite as:  588 U. S. ____ (2019) 

21 

Opinion of the Court 

history, the image of monuments being taken down will be 
evocative,  disturbing,  and  divisive.    Cf.  Van  Orden,  545 
U. S., at 704 (opinion of BREYER, J.) (“[D]isputes concern-
ing  the  removal  of  longstanding  depictions  of  the  Ten 
Commandments  from  public  buildings  across  the  Nation 
. . . could thereby create the very kind of religiously based 
divisiveness  that  the  Establishment  Clause  seeks  to 
avoid”). 
  These  four  considerations  show  that  retaining  estab-
lished,  religiously  expressive  monuments,  symbols,  and 
practices  is  quite  different  from  erecting  or  adopting  new 
ones.  The passage of time gives rise to a strong presump-
tion of constitutionality. 

C 
  The  role  of  the  cross  in  World  War  I  memorials  is  il- 
lustrative  of  each  of  the  four  preceding  considerations.  
Immediately following the war, “[c]ommunities across Amer-
ica built memorials to commemorate those who had served 
the  nation  in  the  struggle  to  make  the  world  safe  for  de-
mocracy.”  G. Piehler, The American Memory of War, App. 
1124.    Although  not  all  of  these  communities  included  a 
cross  in  their  memorials,  the  cross  had  become  a  symbol 
closely  linked  to  the  war.    “[T]he  First  World  War  wit-
nessed a dramatic change in . . . the symbols used to com-
memorate th[e] service” of the fallen soldiers.  Id., at 1123.  
In  the  wake  of  the  war,  the  United  States  adopted  the 
cross  as  part  of  its  military  honors,  establishing  the  Dis-
tinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross in 1918 and 

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nation  and  thus  removed  “plate[s],  statues  and  other  fittings  from 
places  of  worship,”  destroyed  “crosses,  bells,  shrines  and  other,  ‘exter-
nal  signs  of  worship,’ ”  and  altered  “personal  and  place  names  which 
had  any  ecclesiastical  connotations  to  more  suitably  Revolutionary 
ones.”    Tallett,  Dechristianizing  France:  The  Year  II  and  the  Revolu-
tionary  Experience,  in  Religion,  Society  and  Politics  in  France  Since 
1789, pp. 1–2 (F. Tallett & N. Atkin eds. 1991).