American Legion v. Am. Humanist Ass'n
The Supreme Court ruled that a 94-year-old cross-shaped memorial honoring local World War I soldiers, standing at a busy intersection in Bladensburg, Maryland, could remain on public land, rejecting a lawsuit that argued its shape amounted to unconstitutional government favoritism toward Christianity.
The decision moved away from a longstanding, rigid test for judging religious displays and instead looked to history and the memorial's decades of undisputed presence, though the justices disagreed sharply among themselves about how far that shift should extend to future cases.
How it got here: A federal trial court ruled for the Maryland commission, but the Fourth Circuit reversed and held the cross unconstitutional; the commission and the American Legion asked the Supreme Court to review that decision.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Peace Cross, a large Latin cross, has stood at a busy Maryland intersection since 1925, built with private funds to honor 49 local soldiers killed in World War I. A Maryland state park commission later took ownership and has maintained it since. The American Humanist Association and several individuals who said they were offended when encountering the cross sued the commission, arguing that keeping a Christian symbol on public land favored one religion over others.
The question before the Court
Could a 94-year-old cross-shaped war memorial standing on public land in Maryland remain in place without violating the separation of church and state?
Why it matters
Communities with existing religious war memorials, roadside crosses, and similar long-standing displays on public land can keep them without fear of a lawsuit forcing removal. The ruling also raises the bar for people who are merely offended by seeing a religious display to sue over it, though how it applies to newly built memorials remains contested among the justices.
What changes now
This is a final ruling on the merits, and it lets the Peace Cross remain in place without further litigation over that specific memorial. Because several justices wrote separately with different views on how far the Court's history-and-tradition approach should reach, lower courts have some ambiguity about how the ruling applies to newer religious displays or memorials built more recently, and future disputes over such displays are likely to test those limits.
What this does not decide
Concurring justices stressed that the ruling turns on this cross's specific history \u2014 its secular commemorative purpose and 94 years without controversy \u2014 and does not necessarily mean a newly built religious memorial on public land would be treated the same way. The Court did not adopt a blanket rule allowing any religious display simply because it has some history behind it.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer emphasized that there is no single formula for Establishment Clause cases and that the result here depends on the Peace Cross's particular circumstances: its secular commemorative purpose, lack of any intent to disparage other faiths, and 94 years without controversy. He warned that a newly erected religious memorial, or one built with evidence of deliberate disrespect toward minority faiths, would raise different constitutional concerns.
Concurrence — Justice Kavanaugh
Justice Kavanaugh argued the Court has effectively replaced the Lemon test with a history-and-tradition approach across five categories of Establishment Clause cases, none of which Lemon actually explains. He also stressed that the Constitution sets only a floor for individual rights, and that states and other governments remain free to go further and remove the cross if they choose.
Concurrence in part — Justice Kagan
Justice Kagan agreed with most of the Court's reasoning but declined to join the part rejecting Lemon's relevance generally and the part discussing history's broader role, preferring to evaluate Establishment Clause cases case-by-case rather than adopt broader historical rules.
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas argued the Establishment Clause should not apply to the states at all, and that even if it did, only actual legal coercion of religious practice — not the mere display of a religious symbol — violates it. He also urged the Court to overrule the Lemon test entirely rather than merely decline to apply it.
Concurrence — Justice Gorsuch
“This "offended observer" theory of standing has no basis in law.”Gorsuch's argument that mere offense should not be enough to sue over a religious display.
Justice Gorsuch argued the plaintiffs never had standing to sue in the first place, because being merely offended by encountering a monument is not the kind of concrete injury Article III requires. He would have ordered the case dismissed rather than deciding the cross's constitutionality 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.”The dissent's central objection to displaying the cross on public land.
Justice Ginsburg argued the Latin cross is inescapably a Christian symbol that cannot be secularized simply by calling it a war memorial, and that keeping it on public land sends non-Christians a message that they are outsiders. She would have found the display unconstitutional, though she noted the remedy could be tailored, such as relocating the monument rather than destroying it.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court moved away from the decades-old three-part test from Lemon v. Kurtzman, which asked whether a government action's purpose or effect was to advance or endorse religion, in favor of looking to history and tradition when judging religious symbols and religious speech connected to government.
- It found that the Latin cross had acquired a specific, additional secular meaning as a symbol associated with the fallen soldiers of World War I, alongside its everyday religious meaning as a symbol of Christianity.
- The organizers who built the memorial had a clearly secular purpose — commemorating local soldiers — and nothing in the record showed they intended to exclude or disrespect people of other faiths.
- Because the cross had stood for 94 years without generating controversy until this lawsuit, the Court treated that long, undisputed history as evidence that removing or altering it now would look like hostility toward religion rather than neutrality.
- Weighing the memorial's secular commemorative role, its historical context, and its undisturbed place in the community together, the Court concluded that keeping the Peace Cross in place is not a government effort to favor Christianity over other religions or over non-religion.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Limits Lemon v. Kurtzman (403 U.S. 602)
The Court declined to apply this decades-old test to cases about religious symbols and displays on government property.