RNS
WASHINGTON, DC, USA, October 31, 2011 (RNS): The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not reopen a case in which a lower court ruled that highway crosses memorializing Utah state troopers are unconstitutional.
The court’s decision was harshly criticized by Justice Clarence Thomas, the lone dissenter, who said it “rejects an opportunity to provide clarity” to an area of church-state law that is “in shambles.”
Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, which filed the suit in 2005, said he hopes the court’s announcement will bring the case to an end, and lead to an alternative way of honoring troopers who died in the line of duty.
“Erecting divisive religious icons that violate the very Constitution the fallen troopers had sworn to uphold is not the way to honor those troopers who gave the ultimate sacrifice for the citizens of their state,” he said.
The conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which asked the court to consider the case, was disappointed.
[HPI note: This is the second time in recent years the Supreme Court circumvents the issue of the Christian identity of the cross as opposed to, as Justice Scalia puts it, a mark “erected in honor of all of the war dead” of any faith. In 2010, a similar case, concerning a cross erected in the Mojave Desert, was decided based on a legal technicality about who owned the land — therefore avoiding the creation of any legal precedent on the religious aspects.]