Court Says Cross Can Stay on Former City Land
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A federal appeals court ruled a 43-foot cross can remain on Mt. Soledad overlooking La Jolla.
A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the city’s stratagem of selling the land beneath the cross to a nonprofit group to preserve the landmark.
The action was taken after the ACLU and others objected to a cross on public land. A judge had ordered the cross removed as a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.
In 1998, the city sold the cross and half an acre of land for $106,000 as a way to save the cross, which was erected after World War II as a memorial to military veterans.
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