LA County won't challenge federal ruling about cross on county seal

The Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday not to appeal a federal judge’s ruling finding a cross over the San Gabriel Mission on the county’s official seal to be unconstitutional.

The vote, taken behind closed doors, was 3-2, with Supervisors Don Knabe and Michael Antonovich dissenting, according to a brief aouncement made in open session.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Southe Califoia sued the board in February 2014, challenging its decision to restore the cross nearly 10 years after legal wrangling prompted its removal from the seal.

A statement issued by the civil rights organization Tuesday said the group was pleased by the board’s decision.

“The ill-conceived and misguided effort to alter the county seal and favor Christianity over all other faiths has cost taxpayers at least $1 million,” the statement said. “Today’s action guarantees that the taxpayers will not be forced to suffer further. It is time for the board to put its time, energy, and resources into representing all the people of L.A. County.”

The county seal is displayed on buildings, vehicles and official communications.

U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder took the matter under submission in November after a one-day bench trial and made her ruling April 7.

Snyder wrote that the retu of the cross “places the county’s power, prestige and purse behind a single religion, Christianity, without making any such benefit available on an equal basis to those with secular objectives or alteative sectarian views.”

Antonovich and Knabe had proposed adding the cross to the top of the San Gabriel Mission on the county emblem, arguing the cross was vital to the seal’s historical accuracy. The board at that time voted 3-2 in favor of the proposal.

Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel of the Southe Califoia chapter of the ACLU, countered that the two supervisors “are historians in the same way ‘SNL’s’ Father Guido Sarducci is a priest. These supervisors have exacerbated the constitutional slap at all religions by reinserting a Christian cross on the seal by means of a Pinocchio-style fib.”

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