In a 7-2 Decision, the US Supreme Court has ruled that a giant Cross in Bladensburg, Maryland does not violate the idea of a separation of church and state or the first amendment’s oft-abused clause, “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
The WWI monument, in the majority opinion written by Justice Alito, has “special significance” as a war memorial and expression of the community’s grief at its lost sons.
Justice Samuel A. Alito said that removing it, at this point, would actually be seen as “hostility” toward religion.
“The Religion Clauses of the Constitution aim to foster a society in which people of all beliefs can live together harmoniously, and the presence of the Bladensburg Cross on the land where it has stood for so many years is fully consistent with that aim,” he wrote.
SCOTUSblog lists the issues that brought the case as follows.
Issues: (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.
Chief Justice Roberts, with Justices Alito, Breyer, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kagen were in the majority. Only Sotomayor and Ginsberg Dissented.
I’ll add the full opinion when it is published online. More commentary on the various concurring opinions and the dissents as time permits.
