U.S. Appeals Court Says Cross Can Stay at 9/11 Museum

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that a cross-shaped steel beam found in the wreckage of the World Trade Center is a primarily historical rather than religious artifact and can remain on display at the newly opened National September 11 Memorial & Museum, CNN and the New York Daily News report.

Nonbeliever group American Atheists filed suit three years ago seeking to prevent the museum from exhibiting the cross, saying that doing so would promote Christianity and impermissibly mix church and state. A three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit rejected the group’s argument, upholding a lower-court ruling in favor of the display.

The appellate judges said that “a reasonable observer would view the primary effect of displaying the cross at ground zero, amid hundreds of other (mostly secular) artifacts, to be ensuring historical completeness, not promoting religion.”