San Diego, Calif., Jun 8, 2004 / 22:00 pm
Los Angeles County and some of its officials are being sued in a federal district court in California for agreeing to remove the cross from the county’s official seal.
The West Coast regional office of the Thomas More Law Center filed the lawsuit June 4 on behalf of Ernesto Vasquez, a county employee.
Vasquez “objects to the removal of the cross because it sends a government-sponsored message of hostility towards Christians in violation of the United States Constitution,” said the law center in a press release.
LA County supervisors caved in to a demand June 1 made by the ACLU, which threatened to sue the county if it did not remove the cross from the seal.
According to the lawsuit, LA County's actions have "conveyed an impermissible state-sponsored message of disapproval of and hostility toward Christianity in violation of the Establishment Clause." Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the LA County, the LA County Board of Supervisors, and the five County supervisors.
"LA County now has a choice to make,” said associate counsel Robert Muise, “offend the ACLU and keep the cross or defend their unconstitutional policy of discrimination against Christians in federal court.
“The county supervisors were sadly mistaken if they believed that Christians would just roll over and let the county treat them as second-class citizens," he added.
The Thomas More Law Center is a national, public-interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.