LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

9th Circuit again rules that Mojave cross must come down

A cross that stands 8 feet tall in the vast Mojave National Preserve must come down, a federal appeals court ruled in invalidating a congressionally endorsed land exchange that sought to preserve it.

The Christian symbol was built in 1934 by a group of World War I veterans. Congress in 1994 created the national preserve, which put the land under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service.

It has been at the center of a long-running legal battle, reaching the appeals court three times. It also was the subject of language in a congressional defense-appropriations bill that transferred government ownership of an acre of land to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in an effort to end government sponsorship of religious symbols on public land.

But yesterday's ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's decision that the land transfer was a sham. The appeals court had ruled before the land transfer that the cross was unconstitutional. [...]