Letters: Is It Constitutional to Allow a Religious Symbol on Public Land?

Why Is This Cross-Shaped Memorial Constitutional?

In the decades following World War I, a private group in Bladensburg, Maryland, raised money to erect a 40-foot-high cross in memory of 49 local soldiers who had died in the fighting. (After the group’s fundraising efforts stalled, the local American Legion post eventually completed the project in 1925.) In 1961, the state acquired the land on which the cross sat; it has maintained the monument ever since.

Today, American Humanist Association v. American Legion will be argued in the Supreme Court, posing. “The result may help resolve disputes over local memorials around the country. Beyond that, it will tell us a lot about the new conservative Supreme Court majority’s approach to the First Amendment’s establishment clause.”