SALT LAKE CITY – Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes joined a bipartisan group of states fighting to protect a historic cross honoring World War I veterans as part of a case with much broader implications for the First Amendment, St. George News reports.
The 28-state coalition is urging the U.S. Supreme Court to consider and ultimately protect veterans memorials that include religious symbolism. The coalition’s friend of the court brief seeks to overturn a lower court’s ruling that a Maryland memorial violates the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits making any law “respecting the establishment of religion.”
“This case focuses on a war memorial in Maryland honoring 49 soldiers who gave their lives in WWI, but it is much bigger than that,” Reyes said in a statement released Monday. “This Supreme Court decision will impact all of us in the manner in which we remember our history and honor our dead.
