What is at stake in establishment clause cases?

For now, the controversial cross remains boarded up

In the Los Angeles Times, Alliance Defense Fund senior counsel Joseph Infranco and UC Irvine School of Law dean Erwin Chemerinsky debate what is actually at stake in the upcoming Supreme Court case Salazar v. Buono, which concerns the legal status of a monumental Christian cross on California’s Mojave National Preserve. The Times asks, specifically:

What’s the central focus of Salazar vs. Buono—who has standing to sue over violations of the 1st Amendment’s establishment clause, or, more broadly, whether any religious display on publicly owned land is constitutional?

Read the exchange here.

Charles Gelman is a contributing editor of The Immanent Frame and an associate editor of Frequencies. A former program assistant at the Social Science Research Council, he is currently a doctoral student in comparative literature at New York University. He earned his B.A. from the Gallatin School, NYU, in 2009.

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