By Ed Thomas
December 4, 2006

(AgapePress) - A public-interest law firm representing parties who have fought to save San Diego's Mount Soledad cross now expects the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rule moot a federal district judge's May 2006 order to have the cross removed. That's following last week's decision by a state appellate court that upheld Proposition A -- a 2005 ballot referendum transferring the property to the federal government for a war memorial.

Charles LiMandri is West Coast director of Thomas More Law Center, which represented San Diegans for the Mount Soledad War Memorial in the state court appeal. He says in theory, the legality of the transfer under state law -- combined with the law passed by Congress and signed by President Bush this past summer that federalized the memorial -- should now make the federal district court's injunction and removal order no longer enforceable.

"It should be rendered moot," the attorney claims, "because what we have effectively now is transfer of the land to the federal government by a vote of the people. So we don't need to have occur what has taken place more recently," he continues: "a transfer of the land to the federal government through an act of Congress, signed into law by the President last August."

LiMandri says even if the state appellate court's decision is appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, he feels the favor of federal justices such as Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, who issued a stay of the district judge's order last year, would provide the majority vote needed to prevail.

In addition, according to the Thomas More attorney, there was a bonus to last week's decision by the state appellate court. He explains that the appeals judges scolded the lower-court judge, Patricia Cowett, for appearing to place an unconstitutional religious test on someone representing the public trust.

"The panel that decided this case -- again, unanimously, all three judges -- even kind of slapped the trial judge pretty hard by saying they strongly disagreed and were disturbed by [the fact that] one of the reasons for her decision, she said, was that the city was represented by a Christian lawyer," says LiMandri.

Those judges stressed that it is inappropriate for any court to be considering the religious beliefs of any attorney representing a client in this type of case or any type of legal case, he says.