Source: https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/publications/preview_home/does-a-40-foot-high-latin-cross-erected-to-honor-ww-i-veterans-v/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 12:19:27+00:00

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The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” prohibits the creation of a national church and the government favoring certain religious sects over others. But that is where general agreement of these ten words ends. In this case, the Court has an opportunity to clarify the meaning of the Establishment Clause in the context of a 40-foot cross erected as a memorial to fallen World War I soldiers. Is the monument a permissible civic recognition of fallen war veterans or an impermissible advancement and promotion of Christianity?
Does the Establishment Clause require the removal or destruction of a 93-year-old memorial to American servicemen who died in World War I solely because the memorial bears the shape of a cross?
49 World War I soldiers from the county who fought in the global conflict. The monument was a 40-foot Latin cross akin to the Cross at Calvary.
In 1922, the private citizens ran out of money and a local chapter of the American Legion took over the fundraising efforts to complete the memorial. The monument was completed in 1925. In 1961, the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (the Commission) obtained title to the cross-monument.
Today, the cross sits at a busy intersection between Maryland Route 450 and U.S. Route 1 as part of Veterans Memorial Park. Other monuments in the park honor veterans from the War of 1812, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. There also is a 9/11 memorial.
In 2014, the American Humanist Association and three individuals challenged the monument on Establishment Clause grounds.
A federal district court granted summary judgment to the government, applying the familiar Lemon test from Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971). The district court determined that the monument served a secular purpose, the honoring of veterans, rather than the purpose of advancing or promoting Christianity. The district court noted that crosses are often used as commemorative pieces for fallen World War I soldiers.
significant amount of money on maintaining the cross; and (2) the monument “aggrandizes the Latin cross,” elevating it above all the other monuments in the park.
The American Legion, an intervenor in the case, successfully petitioned for Supreme Court review.
For many years, the dominant test for Establishment Clause cases has been the Lemon test from Lemon v. Kurtzman. In its original iteration, it had three parts: (1) the purpose prong, (2) the effects prong, and (3) the entanglement prong. Under the Lemon test, the government’s religious display must have a secular purpose, not primarily advance or inhibit religion, and not excessively entangle church and state. If a religious display or policy violates any one of the three prongs of the Lemon test, the display violates the Establishment Clause.
acknowledgment toward the history and tradition of the allegedly overtly religious practice. The Court ruled that the long, unbroken history of chaplain-led prayer before legislative services justified the practice.
v. Donnelly, 465 U.S. 668 (1984), Justice Sandra Day O’Connor introduced what she termed a “refinement” of the Lemon test: the “endorsement” test. The endorsement test asks whether a reasonable observer, familiar with the history and context of the religious display, would believe that the government is endorsing religion with the display. Many lower courts use the endorsement test as a key part of the effects prong of a Lemon analysis.
Five years later, in a concurring opinion in County of Allegheny v. ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989), Justice Anthony Kennedy introduced what became known as “the coercion test.” Under this test, a governmental display does not violate the Establishment Clause unless it coerces an individual to subscribe to the majoritarian religion. This test, most often used in school prayer cases, includes indirect coercive pressures placed on religious minorities.
In Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677 (2005), a sharply divided Court upheld a Ten Commandments monument in a Texas public park. In the main plurality opinion, Chief Justice William Rehnquist reasoned that the Lemon test did not work well for evaluating the constitutionality of “passive monuments.” Justice Stephen Breyer introduced yet another test, what he termed the “legal judgment” test. Justice Breyer wrote that he saw “no test-related substitute for the exercise of legal judgment,” which must take into account the contexts, history, and facts in these difficult, borderline cases. In a companion case, McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, 545 U.S. 844 (2005), the Court, by a single vote, invalidated Ten Commandment displays at two Kentucky county courthouses.
Petitioners argue that this case should be evaluated under a coercion analysis, rather than Lemon or endorsement tests. They contend that a passive religious monument does not coerce anyone to subscribe or join the Christian religion. “Coercion, not endorsement, is the standard for an Establishment Clause claim,” asserts petitioner American Legion.
all religious displays in the United States. Petitioner argues that this is even more true for memorials that have been in place for decades. Petitioners both analogize to the Court’s decision in Van Orden, upholding the constitutionality of a Ten Commandments monument in a Texas public park that had been there for approximately 40 years. If a Ten Commandments monument in a public park is constitutional, petitioners claim it is hard to see how a Latin cross war memorial is not, particularly one that has been in place for decades longer; in this case, about 90 years.
However, respondents argue that petitioners’ coercion analysis is unworkable. According to respondents, the petitioners’ analysis will fail to protect religious minorities. Respondents argue that the Court should not overrule the Lemon test. In fact, respondents argue that the test works well to evaluate the constitutionality of religious displays. According to respondents, the large Latin cross runs afoul of the Lemon test because it endorses Christianity over all other religions and advances religion over nonreligion.
Respondents further emphasize that the lodestar principle for the Court in Establishment Clause cases should be neutrality, not coercion. They argue that the government’s use of religious imagery and symbolism should be inclusive and nonsectarian, rather than the aggrandizement of Christianity. For example, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, as amicus, points out that the peace cross in this case included Christian World War I veterans from the county but did not include Jewish World War I veterans from the county.
The case affords the Court an opportunity to expound on the meaning of the Establishment Clause and perhaps bring clarity to an area of First Amendment jurisprudence that has been referred to as a muddled mess. The Court perhaps could settle on a single test for Establishment Clause cases, or at least religious display cases.
The justices could explain the importance of history and tradition in Establishment Clause cases, a factor that has not been applied consistently or coherently through the years. The Thomas More Law Center, as amicus in support of petitioners, asserts that destroying the memorial “will deprive future generations of a cherished piece of history.” Similarly, the Foundation for Moral Law contends that because there is an “uninterrupted tradition of cross displays” that predate the First Amendment, the cross in this case cannot violate the Establishment Clause.
David L. Hudson Jr. is a visiting associate professor of legal practice at Belmont Law School in Nashville, Tennessee.
He is also the author, coauthor, or coeditor of more than 40 books, including a coeditor of The Encyclopedia of the Fourth Amendment (2013). He can be reached at davidlhudsonjr@ gmail.com.

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