Supreme Court takes public cross display case

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Friday it would hear the case of a threatened World War I memorial in Bladensburg, Md., that could affect monuments across the country that incorporate religious symbols. The American Humanist Association sued Bladensburg, Md., for a cross memorial erected by an American Legion post in 1925 honoring local men who died in World War I. A U.S. district judge in Maryland ruled the memorial could stay in 2015, but a three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared the cross a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. If the Supreme Court doesn’t reverse the ruling, the memorial must be removed.

The case, The American Legion et al. v. American Humanist Association et al., gives the high court a chance to clarify the rulings of lower courts, which have struggled to consistently and reasonably apply the First Amendment to local war memorials.