Federal Appeals Court Rules Against Utah Memorial Crosses Along Highway

We read:

"A federal appeals court says the 14 crosses erected along state highways to commemorate fallen Utah Highway Patrol troopers are a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the memorials had the effect of conveying a state endorsement or preference of a certain religion.

The ruling reverses a 2007 judge's decision that the crosses communicate a secular message about deaths and were not an illegal public endorsement of religion.

The Texas-based American Atheists Inc., sued to have the crosses removed from state property. The group claimed that without context the crosses imply that trooper who died there was a Christian. [Rubbish! All sorts of people who were not religious during their lives have Christian rites at burial for purely social reasons]

Source

A cross is a conventional marker of mourning in the USA and many other countries -- many of which (such as Britain) are only minimally religious -- so might well have been allowed on those grounds.

In any case, however, the crosses do NOT "establish" a religion. The State would have to be paying the clergy for that to be the case.

Next stop would be SCOTUS but that would be unlikely to be successful as SCOTUS does accept the spurious claim that the constitution demands a separation of church and State -- a much wider demand than forbidding an established church, which is what the constitution actually says

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

[Update by mp] A previous post on this blog (from 2005) provides a report of the issue at the time of filing by the atheists.