Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered the removal of a Bladensburg, Maryland, World War I memorial because its 40-foot tall cross shape violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, reversing a lower court ruling that would have preserved the monument and drawing impassioned reactions from litigants and observers throughout the week.

Bladensburg’s “Peace Cross” was erected by the American Legion in 1925 to honor the 49 men from Prince George’s County who fell in the Great War. In 1961, a Maryland state agency took possession of the land on which the monument sits.

Two of the three judges hearing an appeal led by atheist non-profit the American Humanist Association (AHA) agreed that the cross being allowed to stand was a violation of the “separation of church and state,” regardless of the monument’s stated purpose of honoring the war dead. Defendants, including the American Legion, argued that the cross shape and the inclusion of references to “God” in the memorial’s dedication did not amount to a government “endorsement” of Christianity.

“[T]he sectarian elements easily overwhelm the secular ones,” the majority opinion by Barack Obama-appointed Judge Stephanie Thacker reads.

“We also cannot ignore the American Legion’s affiliation with Christianity,” Thacker notes later, concluding, “The display aggrandizes the Latin cross in a manner that says to any reasonable observer that the Commission either places Christianity above other faiths, views being American and Christian as one in the same, or both.”

A dissent by Bill Clinton-appointed Judge Roger Gregory took issue with the majority’s characterization. “The Establishment Clause was intended to combat the practice of compelling individuals to support and attend government favored churches,” (internal quotes omitted) he argues, adding, with citation to the 1963 Supreme Court decision Abington School Dist. v. Schempp, that it “does not require the government ‘to purge from the public sphere’ any reference to religion.”

Rogers, referencing the dedication plaque on the memorial, concludes:

This Memorial stands in witness to the VALOR, ENDURANCE, COURAGE, and DEVOTION of the forty-nine residents of Prince George’s County, Maryland ‘who lost their lives in the Great War for the liberty of the world.’ I cannot agree that a monument so conceived and dedicated and that bears such witness violates the letter or spirit of the very Constitution these heroes died to defend.

Several amicus (“friend of the court”) briefs, including one in the name of eight bipartisan members of Congress, argued that ordering the cross removed could eventually justify taking away the crosses at sites like Arlington National Cemetery. “The American Humanist Association and its members … advocate what amounts to a per se rule that the display of crosses on government property violates the Establishment Clause,” the brief endorsed by the likes of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) claims.

Judge Thacker saw no such danger, writing: