Rassbach added that if the memorial is ruled unconstitutional, tens of thousands of memorials are at risk of legal challenge.
In a Wednesday phone interview, CNA spoke with Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA). The Congressman is the founder and chairman of the Congressional Prayer Caucus and a supporter of an amicus curiae brief filed in the case by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ).
Rep. Forbes, who observed Wednesday’s hearings, reported that justices “peppered” both sets of attorneys with questions. Every justice except perhaps Justice Clarence Thomas asked a series of questions about the case.
He told CNA that the defense’s argument went in some directions he found regrettable, but he also reported that opponents of the Mojave Cross did not do a good job either.
One concern for defenders of the Mojave Cross, he reported, is how passionate the Obama administration will be in its defense of such cases.
The congressman criticized the government for not raising the issue of the legal standing needed to bring a lawsuit. In his view, the standard is so low that anyone who drives by a cross like the Mojave Cross “automatically gets the right to go into federal court.”
“This can cost defendants hundreds of thousands per case,” Rep. Forbes told CNA. He claimed this was the situation in the Mojave Cross case.
Another issue, he said, concerned whether one can have “a five-foot cross on what will be privately owned land.”
If it comes to the point where one cannot, he warned, “the ripple effect is going to be enormous.”
“What do they do to Arlington Cemetery?” he wondered. “How detrimental would that be to many people across the country who have lost spouses and children and parents who have been honored by these crosses at war memorials and other places and now you’re just ripping it up because one person doesn’t like it?”
The congressman pointed out that the Mojave Desert Cross had been up for “years and years and years.”
When it was first erected, he said, “no one had any inkling that we would be at a day where someone would have a constitutional challenge to anything as simple as a cross.”
(Story continues below)
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