By Gudrun Schultz
SAN DIEGO, California, May 4, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A federal judge ended a 15-year battle over a hilltop cross in the city of San Diego yesterday, ordering the city to remove the cross within 90 days or pay fines of $5,000 per day, reported WorldNetDaily yesterday.
The fight over the Mount Soledad cross has been in the courts since a 1991 ruling that the 29-foot cross violates “separation of church and state,” since the cross sits on city property.
San Diego officials and residents have fought to keep the white cross in place since Phillip Paulsen, an atheist resident backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, filed suit against the city in 1989.
The San Diego Union-Tribune said a group called San Diegans for the Mount Soledad National War Memorial will likely appeal U.S. District Judge Gordon Thompson’s ruling against the city.
Last July, the people of San Diego voted 75% in favour of transferring the land to the federal government, in a ballot initiative by the group, after the city refused to turn the land over to the federal government. It took just 23 days for the group to gather 105,000 signatures.
The United States Congress entered the dispute in 2004 by designating the land beneath the cross as a national veterans memorial. The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan that defends religious freedom for Christians, was instrumental in gaining congressional support for the cross.
There has been a cross on Mount Soledad since 1913. The current cross has been in place as the centre of a war memorial since 1954.
See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
U.S. Congress Acts to Save Mountain-Top Cross - Atheist Blames ‘Jihad Jesus Republicans’
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/nov/04112304.html