US Senate votes to seize San Diego cross property News
US Senate votes to seize San Diego cross property

[JURIST] The US Senate on Tuesday approved a measure [PDF text; HR 5683 summary] to seize land on Mount Soledad in San Diego, thus permitting the First Amendment [text], rather than the California constitution, to control the issue of whether a cross [image], erected on the land as a tribute to Vietnam War veterans, is an impermissible government endorsement of religion. The US House of Representatives last month agreed to transfer the land to the Defense Department [JURIST report] before an expected appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this fall because federal law has been more permissive toward religious displays on public property than the California constitution [text].

Last month, US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ordered the continuation of a temporary stay [JURIST reports] against the removal of the monument pending the Ninth Circuit appeal. Kennedy issued the original stay after a district court ordered [Union-Tribune report] in May that the cross be removed by Aug. 2 and that the city be fined $5,000 a day if it was not, finding that the cross constitutes a state endorsement of religion. Philip Paulson, an atheist and Vietnam War veteran, has been challenging the cross for more than 16 years [Paulson commentary]. The Los Angeles Times has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

White supremacists overthrow government in Wilmington, North Carolina

A group of white supremacists overthrew the government of Wilmington, North Carolina on November 10, 1898, killing at least dozens of Black people in the process. The city's Republican government resigned after the 500-2,000 strong white mob burned the offices of a Black-owned newspaper and terrorized black neighborhoods. The new state Democratic government passed laws in 1899 disenfranchising Black voters across North Carolina. Learn more about the 1898 Wilmington Coup.

Supreme Court limited free speech in wartime

On November 10, 1919, the US Supreme Court ruled in Abrams v. United States that the federal government could criminalize speech if it was of a type tending to bring about harmful results, in this case, resistance to the United States war effort. In a powerful dissenting opinion, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes countered that even during wartime, free speech could only be curtailed when there was clear and "present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about."

Leonid Brezhnev dies

On November 10, 1982, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died of a heart attack. He had served as leader of the USSR from October 1964 until his death. Following his death, the Soviet Union cycled through three more leaders during the 1980s until Mikhail Gorbachev allowed the country to dissolve in 1991. Read an obituary of Leonid Brezhnev from the New York Times.