BLADENSBURG, Md. (Reuters) - When Fred Edwords first drove by the 40-foot-tall (12 meters) concrete cross that has stood for nearly a century on a busy intersection in suburban Maryland outside the U.S. capital, his first reaction was, “What is that doing there?”
To Edwords, who believes there should be an impermeable wall separating church and state, the location of the so-called Peace Cross - a memorial to Americans killed in World War One situated on public land, with vehicles buzzing by on all sides - seemed to be a clear governmental endorsement of religion.
“It’s so obviously part of the town and a centerpiece. It just popped out at me. There was nothing about it that made me think it was anything other than a Christian cross,” Edwords, 70, said in an interview.
Edwords and two other plaintiffs filed a 2014 lawsuit challenging the cross as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing an official religion and bars governmental actions favoring one religion over another.
The conservative-majority court will hear arguments in the case next Wednesday, with a ruling due by the end of June.
While the Establishment Clause’s scope is a matter of dispute, most Supreme Court experts predict the challenge to the Peace Cross will fail, with the justices potentially setting a new precedent allowing greater government involvement in religious expression.
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