The Cross That Went to Court for Twenty-Five Years

The twenty-nine-foot concrete cross at the top of Mount Soledad has stood on publicly owned land in La Jolla since nineteen thirteen. The current structure was built in nineteen fifty-four. In nineteen eighty-nine, the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit arguing that a Christian cross on city-owned property violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits government endorsement of religion.

What followed was one of the longest and most convoluted church-state cases in California history. Two separate Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panels found a constitutional violation. The city held multiple ballot measures. The land was transferred from city to federal ownership in two thousand six, specifically to sidestep the court's jurisdiction. A federal court then ordered the cross removed anyway. The Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the final appeal in two thousand fourteen. Congress transferred the memorial to private ownership. The cross still stands.

The constitutional question was never definitively resolved. After twenty-five years of litigation that generated two circuit court rulings, two Supreme Court petitions, multiple ballot measures, and a federal land transfer, the case ended with a private ownership arrangement rather than a ruling on the underlying question of what a cross on former government land means.

Veterans' memorial plaques surround the cross, and the site serves as a genuine commemoration of military service. That function was added after the litigation began, which is relevant to understanding why the case was difficult to resolve cleanly. The cross stands. The question it raised stands with it, unanswered by the court that would have had to answer it.