THE SUPREME COURT AND THE BAYVIEW CROSS

Over the course of the last three years a lawsuit between a group of local plaintiffs and the city of Pensacola has slowly worked its way through the court system concerning a 34-foot-tall cross in the city’s Bayview Park. The latest court decision in this case was made last September when a Federal Appeals court upheld a lower court decision that found the cross violates the First Amendment’s establishment of religion clause. At first Pensacola’s new mayor, Grover Robinson, said he would drop the appeal but subsequently changed his mind. The city is now appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is all old information if you follow Pensacola news, however this week’s Supreme Court ruling in the American Legion v. American Humanist Assn. case that will allow a cross shaped WWI monument in Bladensburg MD to remain in place has breathed new life into the Pensacola case. All over Facebook local supporters of the Bayview Cross have celebrated the decision as a legal precedent for the Pensacola case. There’s only one problem though, the cases are far from analogous, and this latest ruling shouldn't affect the Bayview Cross case.

In the Maryland case the cross was put up specifically as a WWI monument. The shape of this monument is very similar to the shape of the grave markers of the soldiers killed in WWI and a plaque on it list the names of the 49 soldiers from Prince George’s County that died in the war and quotes from President Wilson’s request for a declaration of war. The center of the monument displays the American Legion’s emblem, and its base has the words Valor, Endurance, Courage and Devotion inscribed in it. It is impossible to look at this structure as anything other than a WWI monument.

WWI monumnet in
Bladenburg, MD

Graves of American WWI
soldiers in Europe

The cross in Bayview Park is very different. The original version of it was a wood cross that was put up shortly before America entered WWII and according to the City of Pensacola was a place where people would gather to pray for God to give our leaders wisdom at the onset of war. The annual Easter sunrise service is the main activity associated with the site, in fact a small bandstand was erected in front of the cross in 1949 to facilitate the annual Easter service. The current cross was put up in 1969 and was dedicated at the 29th annual Easter sunrise service. There is no plaque or any other indication that the cross is a monument to anything.

The Supreme Court decision is long with some of the justices in the majority disagreeing with each other and with other Justices writing dissenting opinions. However, it seems the ruling can be summarized in two main points. First is that the length of time a monument has been in place needs to be considered. Time can obscure the original intent of a monument and its meaning can change over time. It was also reasoned that removing a monument that has been in place for a long period of time may not appear neutral to the local community. This is the portion of the ruling the supporters of the Bayview Cross are latching on to, however simply being in place for a long time isn’t in itself grounds for determining a monument is Constitutionally permissible. It should also be pointed out that the current Bayview Cross has only been in place about half as long as the Bladensburg Cross.

In the second part of the court’s decision the Justices ruled that even if a monument has a religious connotation, other factors must be weighed as well. The court recognized the religious significance of the Latin cross, but in the Maryland case, other than the shape of the monument, most of the other associations are secular. Essentially, the court recognized that a religious symbol can represent other ideas as well and this must be considered in determining if it violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Establishing the secular significance of the Maryland monument was pretty clear cut. The cross in Bayview Park doesn’t have any clearly established secular significance. It’s never been designated as a monument to anything, and it has always been primarily a focal point for religious services. If you strip away all the religious connotations of the Maryland cross it’s still a WWI monument, if you do the same to the Bayview cross it’s simply a large lower-case t.

Another consideration in this issue that I don’t believe was addressed in this court case is the practicality of moving the monument. I’m not sure of the construction of the Bladensburg Cross but I believe it’s a large cement monument and I’ve read that it has structural issues that would likely make it impossible to move without destroying it. The Bayview Park Cross, on the other hand, appears to have much less mass and could likely be moved to a privately-owned site without any serious issues. Personally, I think the Pensacola Christian College would be a good site, but I’m sure there are numerous other churches or other privately-owned sites that would accept the cross. I can nearly guarantee a “Go Fund Me” campaign could easily cover the cost of the transfer, but instead of doing that from the outset, the City has spent tens of thousands of dollars defending the cross in a court case they’re likely to lose.

Some may be surprised that I think the Supreme Court ruled correctly in the Maryland case. If the courts had ruled the cross needed to come down, I think many would reasonably look at that as judicial activism. That monument serves a primarily secular purpose even though the monument's shape is clearly religious in nature. The cross in the Bayview Park doesn’t have any meaningful secular association and has always served a primarily religious function. The cross should be moved to a more appropriate site where those who find comfort in the symbol can visit it and allow those who don’t belong to the Christian religion to visit the public park without a state sponsored Christian symbol in it.