The United States will defend against efforts to remove a giant cross atop a war memorial in Southern California over claims it violates the constitutional separation of church and state , according to a petition filed this week with the U.S. Supreme Court . It 's the latest legal salvo in the decades-long battle over the cross on the memorial at Mount Soledad in San Diego . The legal battle has pitted veterans and caretakers of the memorial against the city and those who say it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment . The court filing by the Department of Justice on Wednesday comes after the Mount Soledad Memorial Association petitioned the Supreme Court to settle , once and for all , the constitutional question about the cross . `` ... The United States remains fully committed to preserving the Mount Soledad cross as an appropriate memorial to our nation 's veterans , '' the Justice Department petition said . Long legal battle . The legal wrangling follows a ruling by a U.S. district judge in December that ordered the cross be taken down from the memorial . But the judge stayed his ruling while the case was appealed . In the petition filed this week , lawyers for the Obama administration warned if the district court reinstated the order that the cross be removed , they would take the issue to the highest court in the nation . The cross was erected in 1954 in honor of Korean War veterans and has been the subject of near constant judicial back-and-forth since 1989 , when two Vietnam War veterans filed suit saying it violated the California Constitution 's `` No Preference '' clause . Since that first lawsuit , the city of San Diego twice tried selling the property beneath the cross to the Mount Soledad Memorial Association , only to be stopped by the courts . In 2004 , the parties involved reached an agreement that would have moved the cross to a nearby church , but two congressmen intervened and inserted a rider into the 2005 omnibus budget bill that designated the property a national veterans ' memorial and authorized the federal government to accept the donation of the property . This led to more fights and more court filings . Congress intervenes . The fight became so contentious that Congress attempted in 2006 to solve the problem by taking control of the land and designating it a national memorial . Three congressmen pushed through a bill calling for the government to seize the property by eminent domain -- calling it `` a historically significant war memorial . '' The federal government took possession in August of that year . But that was followed by more lawsuits , including one filed by Vietnam veterans Steve Trunk and now-deceased Philip K. Paulson and another filed by the ACLU on behalf of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States . The suits sought to stop the transfer of property to the government , saying the Christian cross atop the memorial violated the Establishment Clause that prohibits the government from taking a position on one religion over another . The district court has since consolidated the cases .
The Obama administration says it will fight attempts to remove a cross from a war memorial . The cross sits atop a memorial on Mount Soledad in San Diego . It was erected in 1954 to honor Korean War veterans . TL;DR A federal judge has ruled that the government can keep up its effort to take down an American flag at a California Veterans Memorial.