Senate OKs bill to protect San Diego cross
- Aug 11, 2006 -
The Senate approved without opposition Aug. 1 legislation to protect San Diego’s Mount Soledad cross as a memorial to military veterans.
Senators agreed by unanimous consent to grant to the federal government ownership of the Mount Soledad Veterans Memorial, a 29-foot cross that stands atop an 800-foot mountain and has been a target of church-state separationists. The House of Representatives voted 349-74 for the same measure July 19.
President Bush is expected to sign it into law.
The legislation would sign over the property to the federal government to preserve it as a national military war memorial, which would be administered by the Department of Defense. The federal government would be required to pay an appropriate amount for the property and would be barred from extending the memorial’s boundaries.
The Senate action marked another in a series of recent wins for those seeking to prevent a court from removing the cross, which was erected in 1954 as a tribute to veterans of the Korean War.
Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy blocked enforcement of a federal judge’s order for San Diego to remove the cross by Aug. 1 or pay $5,000 a day in fines. His July 7 decision prevented fines until the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court rules on the case. The Ninth Circuit will hear the case in mid-October.
Congress passed in 2004 a bill designating the cross as a national memorial in honor of veterans and authorizing federal ownership of it if San Diego donated it. In 2005, San Diego voters approved with a 76 percent majority an initiative authorizing the city to give the memorial to the federal government. A state judge, however, ruled the measure was unconstitutional.
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