Sunrise Rock is a large outcropping located in Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County, California. A Christian cross has stood there since 1934, when the VFW erected a wooden monument to honor veterans of World War I. Since then, the cross has been replaced several times, always by private citizens.
Its current incarnation stands eight feet tall, was built out of white metal pipes, and was erected in 1998 by Henry Sandoz, who lives nearby. But its very presence on public land raises troubling questions about the federal endorsement of a particular religion, questions which came to the fore with a series of legal maneuvers and lawsuits starting in 1999.
The Beginning of the Sunrise Rock Controversy
A year after the current cross was put into place, the National Park Service received a request from a Utah resident who wished to erect a Buddhist memorial shrine, or stupa, near the Sunrise Rock cross. The NPS refused the request, on the grounds that memorials or permanent displays placed on public land by private individuals violated federal law. Furthermore, they announced, the Sunrise Rock cross was also illegal under these guidelines, and would be removed. In 2000, Congress heard of the NPS's intentions and intervened, passing a law that no federal money could be used to remove the cross. It was this law that triggered the first of a series of lawsuits regarding the legality of the monument.
Buono and the First Lawsuit
Retired Assistant Superintendent Buono, a former National Park Service employee, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, arguing that the cross violated the Establishment Clause. According to the Pew Forum, which has an outline of the case, Buono is a practicing Catholic who was personally not offended by the sight of the cross; his greater concern was that the federal government appeared to be favoring one religion over another.
In early 2002, when the lawsuit was still being heard in the district court, Congress further intervened by designating the cross a national memorial and allocating funds to the NPS to purchase a replica of the original VFW cross and to install a memorial plaque on the site. Despite these maneuvers, in July 2002 the district court in California agreed with Buono that the cross was a violation of federal law, and ordered the NPS to remove it.
"A Little Doughnut Hole"
In November 2002, Congress passed another law disallowing public funds for the cross's removal. Then the NPS, who had originally announced their intention to remove the cross, appealed the district court's order to remove it. And then, when the appeal was still pending, Congress intervened once again, passing a law exchanging the acre of land containing the cross with five acres of private land owned by the installer of the cross, Henry Sandoz.
As the court later pointed out, this odd action had the effect of forming "a little doughnut hole" of land owned privately by the VFW in the middle of "a vast federal preserve." The exchange, however, was not absolute; the law stipulated that if the "doughnut hole" was used as anything but a memorial site, the federal government would automatically regain ownership.
The NPS, complying with the new law, began the process of transferring the land to the VFW. In response Buono filed another lawsuit to compel the NPS to comply with the original district court order to remove the cross. Buono's lawsuit was successful; the district court ruled that the land exchange was an illegal attempt to circumvent their order. The NPS took their case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the original ruling was upheld. They then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, who began hearing the case of Salazar v. Buono on Oct. 7, 2009.
Supreme Court Case Salazar v. Buono and its Implications
The case of the Sunrise Rock cross raises many questions on church-state issues. The NPS and its named plaintiff, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, argue that Buono had no standing to sue because he was not personally harmed or offended by the cross. They further contend that the land exchange was valid, and that the cross does not violate the Establishment Clause any longer because it now resides on an acre owned privately by the VFW.
Buono, on the other hand, argues that while the cross did not offend him in a religious sense, he was offended by the implication that the cross represented the government's preference for one religion over another. He further contends that even if the land exchange was legal, the cross would still violate the Establishment Clause because Congress had never repealed the law they had passed designating it a national memorial; in addition, Buono alleges that the land exchange was incomplete because the federal government still held interest in the land due to their ability to seize it if the VFW used it for purposes not designated by the narrow law.
Lawyer and bioethicist Ronald A. Lindsay, in a Free Inquiry article, points out that the Supreme Court's decision in this case could have wide implications, not only regarding the display of religious symbols on public land, but also on fundamental issues such as who has standing to sue in cases of perceived federal endorsements of particular faiths.
Sources:
"In Brief: Salazar v. Buono." Available at: http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=440. 13 Nov 2009.
Lindsay, Ronald A. "The Cross in the Doughnut Hole: A Different Church-State Test for the Obama White House." Free Inquiry. Vol. 29 #4. June/July 2009: 39-40.
Jenny Ashford - Jenny Ashford is a writer and graphic artist from central Florida. Her main area of interest in her Suite 101 articles is science, with a ...
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