American Legion v. American Humanist Assn.
The Supreme Court ruled that a 32-foot Latin cross erected in 1925 to honor local World War I dead, and maintained on public land by a Maryland state agency, does not violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause.
The decision signals that the Court will treat old, established religious monuments and symbols very differently from newly built ones, and it further sidelines a decades-old legal test that many justices had already stopped relying on.
“The cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol, but that fact should not blind us to everything else that the Bladensburg Cross has come to represent.”
The majority's summary of why the cross's religious origin does not make it unconstitutional today.
How it got here: A federal trial court ruled for the memorial's defenders; the Fourth Circuit reversed and found the cross unconstitutional; the state commission and the American Legion asked the Supreme Court to review that ruling.
The Case in Depth
What happened
In 1925, the local American Legion completed a 32-foot Latin cross in Bladensburg, Maryland, honoring 49 county soldiers killed in World War I. A Maryland state agency later acquired the cross and the land beneath it and has spent public funds maintaining it since 1961. In 2014, the American Humanist Association and several individuals sued, arguing that the cross's presence on public land and its upkeep with tax dollars endorsed Christianity in violation of the Establishment Clause.
The question before the Court
Could a 94-year-old, cross-shaped war memorial on public land in Maryland violate the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that the Bladensburg Peace Cross does not violate the Establishment Clause. Although the cross began as a Christian symbol, the Court found that its use in World War I memorials took on an added, secular meaning tied to honoring fallen soldiers, and that the memorial's 94-year history as a community landmark weighed strongly against finding any unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.
The Court explained that long-standing, religiously-associated monuments deserve a strong presumption of constitutionality because their original purposes are often impossible to pin down decades later, their meaning tends to broaden over time, and tearing them down can itself look like hostility to religion rather than neutrality. Because there was no evidence the cross was designed to exclude or disrespect soldiers of other faiths, the Court held that Maryland's continued maintenance of the memorial was constitutionally permissible.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Communities across the country that maintain older war memorials shaped like crosses or featuring other religious imagery can keep them in place without fear of a new constitutional challenge succeeding. The ruling gives local and state governments more room to preserve historic monuments, while leaving open questions about how newly built religious displays on government property would be judged.
What changes now
The ruling is a final decision on the merits, reversing the Fourth Circuit and ending the litigation over the cross's constitutionality; the case is sent back only for any remaining proceedings consistent with the Court's holding. The memorial will remain on public land under the state commission's ownership and upkeep. The decision does not set a single formula for future cases involving newer religious displays, so those disputes will likely continue to be litigated case by case.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide that all religious displays on government property are automatically constitutional, and several justices stressed that a newly built religious memorial, without the same history, might be treated differently. The ruling is limited to long-standing, historically rooted monuments and does not establish a single across-the-board test for evaluating newer religious symbols or practices on government land.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed the cross is constitutional but reiterated his view that there is no single formula for Establishment Clause cases. He emphasized that this outcome depends heavily on the cross's specific history, its secular commemorative purpose, and the absence of any evidence of exclusion, and stressed that a newer religious memorial erected under different circumstances would not necessarily be treated the same way.
Concurrence — Justice Kavanaugh
Justice Kavanaugh joined the Court's opinion in full but wrote to argue that the Lemon test is no longer good law in any category of Establishment Clause cases, not just monument cases. He proposed that religious displays, accommodations, and equal treatment of religious speech should instead be evaluated under history, tradition, and equal-treatment principles, so long as there is no coercion.
Concurrence in part — Justice Kagan
Justice Kagan agreed with most of the Court's reasoning and joined the parts finding the cross constitutional, but declined to join the sections rejecting Lemon's purposes-and-effects framework and embracing a broader historical-practices approach. She said she preferred to evaluate the role of history case-by-case rather than adopt sweeping statements about history's role in Establishment Clause analysis.
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas argued the Establishment Clause likely should not apply to the states at all, and that even if it did, the plaintiffs showed no actual legal coercion, which he views as the essential feature of a religious establishment. He also urged the Court to go further and overrule the Lemon test entirely, calling it unmoored from the Constitution's original meaning and endlessly manipulable.
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch agreed the memorial is constitutional but argued the case should have been dismissed outright for lack of standing, rejecting what he called an invented "offended observer" theory that lets people sue simply because a religious display bothers them. He would have instructed the lower court to dismiss the suit rather than rule on the merits.
Dissent — Justice Ginsburg
“By maintaining the Peace Cross on a public highway, the Commission elevates Christianity over other faiths, and religion over nonreligion.”Ginsburg's central objection that the government display favors Christianity over other beliefs.
Justice Ginsburg argued the Latin cross is an inherently and exclusively Christian symbol whose commemorative meaning cannot be separated from that religious significance. She contended that placing and maintaining such a large cross on public land conveys governmental favoritism toward Christianity over other faiths and over nonbelief, undermining the neutrality the Establishment Clause is meant to guarantee, and would have found the display unconstitutional.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court explained that a decades-old three-part test from Lemon v. Kurtzman — which asked whether a government action had a secular purpose, avoided advancing or inhibiting religion, and avoided excessive government entanglement with religion — has proven unworkable for cases about long-standing religious monuments, symbols, and practices, and the Court has often ignored or declined to apply it in such cases.
- The Court identified four reasons old monuments deserve different treatment than newly built ones: their original purpose is often impossible to determine so long after the fact; the reasons for keeping them tend to multiply over time; their public meaning can evolve independently of their origins; and removing a familiar, long-standing monument can itself look like hostility toward religion rather than neutrality.
- Applying those considerations, the Court found that the Latin cross had taken on a distinct, secular meaning tied specifically to World War I, because the U.S. military and the public associated rows of white cross-shaped grave markers with the war dead, independent of the symbol's Christian origin.
- The Court concluded that the Bladensburg memorial had, over nearly a century, become an established community landmark commemorating the sacrifice of named local soldiers, and found no evidence that its design was meant to exclude or disrespect soldiers of other faiths.
- Because the memorial fit within a tradition of retaining historically significant, religiously-associated monuments rather than resembling a newly erected religious display, the Court held that maintaining it did not amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Lemon v. Kurtzman (403 U. S. 602)
The Court declined to apply Lemon's purpose-effect-entanglement test to cases about longstanding religious monuments and symbols.