ACRU filed a brief in support of the City of San Diego in California state appellate court on appeal from a state judge’s order prohibiting the City from transferring the Mt. Soledad Memorial and its cross to the Federal government, as approved in a city referendum with 76% in support. The Federal government intervened to safeguard the monument by its powers of eminent domain; plaintiff Paulson is recently deceased. ACLU may file another suit challenging the Federal action.

On January 12, 2007, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit to remove the memorial as moot and said a district court order to remove the […]

ACRU filed a Petition for Writ of Certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the private association which had bought the Mt. Soledad property in the sale invalidated by the Ninth circuit. But the Supreme Court denied the petition because the Ninth Circuit had invalidated the sale based on the California state constitution.

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ACRU filed a brief in support of the City of San Diego in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on an appeal by Paulson from a Federal judge’s order approving the sale of the Mt. Soledad property including the cross to a private association. The three judge Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the sale as valid, as the ACRU brief urged. But Plaintiff won a rehearing en banc by the entire 9th circuit which reversed and invalidated the sale on the grounds that it amounted to an unconstitutional establishment of religion under the California constitution.

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