NEWS ALERT: A Victory for Cross-Bearing Christians--A Win in the Battle to Keep the Mt. Soledad Cross Right Where it Stands
The voter-approved "Proposition A" has been ruled constitutional by a San Diego appeals court. The measure, which voters passed by a huge margin--76%--in 2005, authorized the transferring land underneath the Mount Soledad cross to the federal government.
On Thursday, a panel of justices from the 4th District Court of Appeals voted 3-0 to overturn an earlier decision by Superior Court Judge Patricia Yim Cowett. Cowett had ruled Prop A invalid, stating that it violated the state's constitutional ban on the government preferring any one religion over another. But the appeals court disagreed with her ruling.
"The citizens and the voters made all the difference in this case," says Charles LiMandri, West Coast Regional Director of the Thomas More Law Center, a Catholic public interest law firm. "I feel the fourth appellate court issued a strong rebuke to Judge Cowett today. The justices issued a good and well-reasoned 53-page ruling," LiMandri told SCCN.
Proposition A had been challenged by Philip Paulson, the self-avowed atheist who has led a 17-year battle to remove the cross. Paulson, from City Heights, died last month at the age of 59 from liver cancer. He had dedicated his final years pushing for the separation of church and state.
When he found out he was dying of liver cancer, Paulson gave an exclusive interview to the San Diego Union Tribune only after the paper agreed that they would not publish his comments until after his death. Paulson told the UT he did not hate Christians.
“I don't harbor those kind of feelings,” Paulson said. “My mother's a Christian. I was raised a devout Christian. I'm not anti-Christian. The reason I did it is because it's not fair to the other religions. America is not just the Christian religion.”
Aside from today's court win, cross supporters had another victory in August when the United States Congress voted to transfer the land underneathe the cross to the federal government, specifically, the Defense Department. This left the City of San Diego free from draining lawsuits, and made moot a judge's ruling that the cross violated the state's constitutional ban on aiding any religion. President Bush later signed off on the transfer as well.
WHAT'S NEXT:
Opponents of the cross have already filed new lawsuits in federal court.
LiMandri says he foresees hundreds more hours of work defending the cross. James McElroy, who was attorney for Paulson is appealing today's ruling to the California Supreme Court. That court will have two months to decide whether they are going to take the case, then they have up to a year to issue the ruling.
LiMandri is urging Christians to continue the push to keep the war memorial where it is; to not grow weary of doing good. He says he will continue to work pro-bono to fight these lawsuits, and the battles needs all the help it can get.
"The court gave credit today to a well-educated electorate who knew what they were doing when they voted. Judge Cowett should not have been trying to second-guess them."
