Court Orders Removal Of Crosses: Utah's Roadside Memorials To Fallen State Troopers Have To Go

From Utah News and The Christian Reader:

Utah’s roadside memorial crosses have to go, court rules


By pamela manson



and Kristen moulton



The Salt Lake Tribune



Updated 2 hours ago Updated Aug 19, 2010 12:57PM

The tall crosses memorializing fallen Utah Highway Patrol troopers will not come down anytime soon — even though a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that they violate the U.S. Constitution.



The decision, which holds implications for roadside memorial crosses across the nation, likely will be appealed by the state and the nonprofit group that erected themonuments.



They could either ask the full 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hear the case or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.



Wednesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the Denver-based circuit court — striking down a lower federal court decision — was applauded by those who want to keep church and state separate and decried by those who see it as another nudge pushing religion out of the public square.



“It’s a decision that had to be made,” said the Rev. Tom Goldsmith, of Salt Lake City’s First Unitarian Church. “We need to learn that God and country is not one word.”



But Luke Goodrich, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C., said the judges got it wrong.



“The ruling essentially says religious speech is bad and secular speech is OK,” said Goodrich, who argued before the appeals court on behalf of Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma. Those four states intervened in the case.



The decision, Goodrich noted, “calls into question roadside crosses in other states across the nation.”



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The case began in 2005 when Texas-based American Atheists Inc. and three of its Utah members sued the state for allowing the Utah Highway Patrol Association to incorporate the UHP logo on the 12-foot-high crosses and place some of them on public property.



Between 1998 and 2003, the nonprofit UHPA erected 14 crosses to remember troopers, two outside a UHP office and the rest along highways, most of them on public land and several on private property.



The ruling affects all 14 because each has theUHP beehive insignia on it, said Brian Barnard, the Salt Lake City civil-rights attorney who represents the atheists.



The crosses were the brainchild of UHP Lt. Lee Perry, a member of the association who is the GOP nominee for a Utah House seat, and his friend, Robert Kirby, a columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune who once was a police officer.



They chose a white cross, although it is not a symbol commonly used by Utah’s dominant religion, the LDS Church, because it could convey quickly to motorists a message of death, sacrifice and honor.



The 6-foot horizontal crossbars are each imprinted with a fallen trooper’s name, rank and badge number. Below that is the UHP’s beehive symbol as well as a plaque with the trooper’s photo and biographical information.



Funds to erect the crosses were raised privately, and the troopers’ families approved of the crosses, although the UHPA said it offered to display alternate religious symbols.



The atheists, however, argued that the crosses violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by endorsing Christianity.



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