Source: Google News
Wire Service: AP
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8QO_ctQm-Ud4QJtkds1JkQu1-YQD9FCCASG2
The Supreme Court's conservative majority signaled a greater willingness to allow religious symbols on public land Wednesday, a stance that could have important implications for future church-state disputes.
By a 5-4 vote, the court refused to order the removal of a congressionally endorsed war memorial cross from its longtime home atop a remote rocky outcropping in California's Mojave Desert.
The court directed a federal judge to look again at Congress' plan to transfer the patch of U.S. land beneath the 7-foot-tall cross made of metal pipe to private ownership.
Federal courts had rejected the land transfer as insufficient to eliminate constitutional concern about a religious symbol on public land — in this case in the Mojave National Preserve.