This is the case of a cross erected in what is now a traffic circle to commemorate fallen soldiers in World War I. The Fourth Circuit agreed with a group of local residents and the American Humanist Association that the memorial is unconstitutional, but today the Court reversed, so the cross can stay.
Justice Alito looks to history, appearing to draw an analytical line between maintenance of long-established monuments with potential religious significance and erection of new ones.
Ginsburg and Sotomayor are the only full dissenters in the case.
Here’s the link to the opinion in American Legion v. American Humanist Association. Amy Howe will have our analysis:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/18pdf/17-1717_4f14.pdf
The upshot is that the Fourth Circuit is reversed and remanded.
Court says that cross “has become a prominent community landmark, and its removal or radical alteration at this date would be seen by many not as a neutral act but as the manifestation of a hostility toward religion that has no place in our Establishment Clause traditions. And contrary to respondents’ intimations, there is no evidence of discriminatory intent in the selection of the design of the memorial or the decision of a Maryland commission to maintain it. The Religion Clause of the Constitution aim to foster a society in which people of all beliefs can live together harmoniously, and the presence of the Bladensburg Cross on the land where it has stood for so many years is fully consistent with that aim.”
by Amy Howe 10:16 AM
Breyer broke away from Ginsburg and concurred with Alito? Has this ever happened before? I thought they voted together 100 percent of the time.
Abandoning offended observer standing will mean only a return to the usual demands of Article III, requiring a real controversy with real impact on real persons to make a federal case out of it.