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"This was a legal fight that a vandal just made personal to 50 million veterans, military personnel and their families," National Commander Thomas J. Tradewell said. It was not immediately clear, however, whether a replacement cross would be permitted. "We're waiting for news from the Department of Justice as to what we should do. The case is still in litigation," said Slater, the park service spokeswoman. Federal courts ruled earlier in this decade that having the cross in the national preserve was unconstitutional. The issue that most recently went to the Supreme Court was the rejection by lower courts of the congressional effort to solve the problem by transferring the land into private hands. In sending the case back to a lower court, six justices wrote separate opinions. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote that the cross shouldn't be seen merely as a religious symbol.
"Here one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten," he wrote. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens agreed that soldiers who died in battle deserve a memorial. But the government "cannot lawfully do so by continued endorsement of a starkly sectarian message," Stevens said. The ACLU's Eliasberg said he hadn't thought about what to do if the cross is replaced, but noted that the group had not objected to leaving up the current cross while it was covered. Eliasberg said he did not know whether Frank Buono, the former park service employee involved in the lawsuit, had been contacted by any investigator. Eliasberg said Buono is a "decent and honorable person" who has pursued the case through the courts.
[Associated
Press;
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