Opinion ID: 778159
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Location of the Cross & Its Proximity to the Public Park

Text: 100 Paulson contends that selling one half acre of land on which the cross is located does not cure the constitutional infirmity because it is still visable from some areas of the remaining public park land. As the district court noted, this is a 170 acre park most of which is rugged undeveloped open space with some trails and the cross is not even visible from many places within this undeveloped portion of the park. As the district court also noted, it appears that the amount of land sold to the Association includes all the land up to the public sidewalk that encircles the cross. Outside the public sidewalk, there is a circular public driveway, a public parking area and some cleared public land outside the driveway including an area of grass with benches and a water fountain. The cross is visible from the parking area and cleared portions of the park. The important consideration for this cleared area is whether the distinction between the public and private area is clearly marked. 101 In determining whether a reasonable observer would view the presence of the cross as a governmental preference for religion, the district court considered the Association's preparation of design and construction plans to develop the site as a war memorial. These plans involve erecting twenty-six concrete bollards, one every twenty feet, surrounding the memorial site. Between each bollard will be a plaque stating Mount Soledad Veterans' Memorial Private Property. The Association also intends to install additional signs for the publicly owned portion of the park to further identify the memorial site as private property. 102 This enhanced demarcation of the site as private property rectifies any potential appearance of preference for religion. While it is conceivable that an observer from a significant distance could mistake the cross as being part of the public park, once that person reached the memorial site they would quickly recognize that the cross sits on private property. Additionally, the fact that this land is private both by its sale and designation, triggers protection of the Association's constitutional rights of Free Exercise and Free Speech. Requiring the removal of the cross from private property would infringe upon the Association's fundamental constitutional rights. 103 C. Establishment Clause, Free Exercise and Free Speech There is a crucial distinction between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause prohibits, and private speech endorsing religion, which the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses protect. See Capitol Square Review & Advisory Bd. v. Pinette, 515 U.S. 753, 765, 115 S.Ct. 2440, 132 L.Ed.2d 650 (1995). The distinction disappears when private speech can be mistaken for that of the government. Id. at 766, 115 S.Ct. 2440. When such a mistake renders private speech attributable to the government is not clear. In Pinette, a plurality warned that it would have radical implications for our public policy to suggest that neutral laws are invalid whenever hypothetical observers may— even reasonably —confuse an incidental benefit to religion with state endorsement. Id. at 768, 115 S.Ct. 2440. The Supreme Court held that the state did not violate the Establishment Clause by permitting a private party to display an unattended cross on the grounds of the state capitol. Three Justices concurred in the judgment, noting that their vote to affirm was in large part because of the possibility of affixing a sign to the cross adequately disclaiming any government endorsement of it. Id. at 784, 115 S.Ct. 2440. 104 Assuming without deciding that Pinette even applies to a religious display on private property, the disclaimers and demarcations that the Association has installed and planned clearly designate the land and the cross as private property, which alleviates the concerns of government endorsement raised in Pinette. See id. at 766, 115 S.Ct. 2440 (involving the presence of a cross on public property). This case even more clearly invokes the Association's constitutional rights of free exercise and free speech because they have validly purchased the land. 105 The Seventh Circuit recently addressed a more factually analogous situation and, following the analysis in Pinette, analyzed whether a reasonable person would perceive government endorsement of religion. Freedom From Religion Foundation, 203 F.3d at 496. The Seventh Circuit held the presence of a statue of Christ in a city park to be unconstitutional, even after upholding the city's sale of .15 acre of land containing the statue to a private memorial fund. There, the private land had no visual boundaries that would inform the reasonable observer that the statue sat on private property. Id. at 494. The Seventh Circuit suggested that a fence to separate the public from private property and a clearly visible disclaimer would effectively remedy the appearance of government endorsement. Id. at 497. See Freedom From Religion Foundation v. City of Marshfield, 2000 WL 767376 (W.D.Wis. May 9, 2000) (Mem.) (finding upon remand that a ten foot wall around the statue is more than what is reasonably necessary to remedy the Establishment Clause violation). Thus, the facts relevant to the issue of continuing endorsement of religion here differ in a crucial way from Freedom From Religion Foundation because the Association plans to construct clearly visible boundaries around the private land, to display disclaimers, and has worked diligently on its promised improvements for the memorial. 106 With such clear demarcations between the surrounding public property and the private property on which the cross sits, a reasonable observer would not conclude that the government endorsed the presence of the cross. Moreover, we decline to adopt a rule that would infringe upon private property owners' constitutional rights to display religious symbols on their land simply because their land sits next to publicly owned land or was formerly on public land. The fact that some hypothetical observer viewing the cross from afar could conceivably confuse its presence to be on public land, does not justify forcing a private landowner to sacrifice its own constitutional rights. We follow the Supreme Court's admonition that too broad a reading of the Establishment Clause would have radical implications for our public policy. Pinette, 515 U.S. at 768, 115 S.Ct. 2440.