WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court seemed inclined Wednesday to permit a five-foot-tall cross to remain standing in California's Mojave National Preserve, while avoiding a broader ruling that could affect religious symbols on government property.

Federal courts in California found that the cross, erected on Sunrise Rock, a remote outcropping in the 1.6 million-acre desert preserve, violated the Constitution's ban on a congressional "establishment of religion." Congress then declared the cross a "national memorial" and voted to transfer an acre around it to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, whose local post first built a cross there in 1934 as a memorial to fallen soldiers.

Lower courts found the arrangement effectively was a sham, though the government received property in return, because the one-acre parcel reverts to the government if the VFW fails to maintain the memorial.

In Supreme Court arguments Wednesday, the justices looked closely at the terms of the 2004 act transferring the property. The court's decision could turn on whether the justices conclude the act requires the VFW specifically to maintain the cross.

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, representing the Obama administration, said the act gave the group discretion. The act requires only that the VFW maintain "a war memorial. It does not have to be this war memorial."