Yet again, back in the Mojave Desert!
What’s up with the Mojave Desert, anyway? 
For a somewhat inhospitable place ( for humans, anyway ), it certainly generates a lot of news! I wrote about a large (500-megawatt) solar power installation planned for Fort Irwin and then again about plans for a solar power installation by private industry, the latter of which have been shelved.
Now, the United States Supreme Court will be debating, on Wednesday, whether the Mojave cross, a war memorial erected by a veterans group 75 years ago, violates the First Amendment’s provision for the separation of church and state. Specifically, does an individual who protests the cross have legal standing to take the case to court? And what about Congressional efforts to minimize the appearance of a Constitutional violation…? The Mojave cross stands in the middle of the Mojave National Preserve, which is government land in Southern California. A federal judge has ordered the cross to be covered, and it is currently boxed in plywood, until the dispute is resolved.
Riley Bembry, a medic in World War I, helped to erect the Mojave cross in 1934 on a 4000-foot plateau. The cross was a place of reflection for World War I veterans who went to the desert partly to recover from lung damage caused by mustard gas in the war. Although an annual Easter service is held there, only locals were aware of the place until recently, and the site is not marked on maps. Bembry cared for the memorial until his death in 1984. In 1994, 1.6 million acres of desert, including the land with the cross, was transferred to the National Park Service.
A few years later, a resident wanted to place a Buddhist shrine near the cross, and the request was denied. A former deputy superintendent of the preserve, Frank Buono, filed a lawsuit with the help of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). Earlier this decade, a federal judge ordered the cross removed. A judge ruled that, until the dispute is settled, the cross had to be covered. Congressional lawmakers, in 2001, prohibited the Park Service from spending federal dollars to remove the cross. The Republican-led Congress at the time agreed to transfer one acre of land around the cross to private ownership, in return for five private acres within the reserve becoming public. A San Francisco-based appeals court turned the offer down, stating that the offer failed to satisfy Constitutional concerns.
(Update added October 11, 2009: Some of the reported details of the Court’s debate are fascinating. A decision is not expected for several months.)
Stay tuned.
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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