Pensacola’s Bayview Park cross lawsuit is going back to court. The Supreme Court has vacated previous rulings in the case that the cross violates the separation of church and state and has ordered the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the case in light of the high court’s ruling on the Bladensburg Cross case out of Maryland . The order means attorneys will have to present the case again in front of federal judges in Atlanta with new arguments. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled in a 7-2 decision that a 40-foot cross erected in 1919 as a World War I memorial on public land in Maryland did not violate the Constitution’s Establishment Clause. The court ruled that although crosses are a symbol of Christianity, the government does not necessarily have to remove a cross that has been in place for such a long time that it has also taken on a secular meaning. The city of Pensacola’s attorneys said in a press release that they plan to argue the same idea should be applied to the Bayview Cross. “The Supreme Court’s order is an encouraging sign that the Bayview cross can stay in Pensacola just like […]
