Thomas More Law Center: “Judge’s Order To Remove The Mt. Soledad Cross Is Not The End Of the Story.”

ANN ARBOR, MI – Following a 17-year battle between the city of San Diego and the atheist Philip Paulson, Federal District Judge Gordon Thompson ordered San Diego officials to remove the historic Mount Soledad Cross in accordance with an order he issued in 1991 within ninety days or face fines of $5,000 per day thereafter. The 43-foot Cross was erected in 1954 and currently is the centerpiece of a national memorial honoring American veterans of all wars.

The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, has been intimately involved in defense of the Mt. Soledad Cross and National Memorial. In 2004, just weeks before the Cross was to be removed, the Law Center devised the legal blueprint to designate the land a national veteran’s memorial, which the area’s congressmen implemented in a federal omnibus appropriations act on December 8, 2004. Transfer of the land from city ownership to federal ownership, which would negate the constitutional basis for any order removing the Cross, looms as the bone of contention.

Just days before Judge Thompson’s order to remove the Cross, Charles LiMandri, the west coast regional director of the Law Center, hand delivered a supplemental legal memo on behalf of San Diegans for the Mt Soledad National Memorial pointing out how recent federal court decisions supported keeping the Cross where it is. Read on..