LA County Seal Supporters Push to Meet Deadline for Ballot Initiative
Petitioners are pushing to gather enough signatures by the Sept. 26 deadline to qualify an initiative to return the cross to the Los Angeles County Seal for the June 2006 ballot.
Petitioners are pushing to gather enough signatures by the Sept. 26 deadline to qualify an initiative to return the cross to the Los Angeles County Seal for the June 2006 ballot.
The Committee to Support the Los Angeles County Seal Ordinance, which is spearheading the initiative, reported Thursday on its website that 68,759 signatures from registered voters in Los Angeles County have been gathered. To meet the required number of signatures - 170,606 - the Committee must collect 101,241 before the 180-day time frame after which the petition drive file-date expires.
If the nearly 60 churches and Christian organization enlisted in grassroots petition drive are successful in meeting the signature quota, the Board of Supervisors shall either: adopt the ordinance, without alterations, at the regular meeting in which it is presented or within ten days after it is presented; or place the ordinance on the June 6, 2006 ballot.
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David Hernandez, original defender of the seal who also chairs the Committee, has also recently sent a letter to the Board, asking the supervisors to adopt an ordinance returning the cross to the county's seal, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last month to uphold an outdoor Ten Commandments plaque in Texas.
Upon receiving Hernandez's letter, Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke has asked county lawyers to determine whether the high court ruling would contribute to the county's defense against the American Civil Liberties Union's request to remove the cross from the county seal.
"(She) wants to find out if they feel any differently about the ability of the county to successfully defend against the ACLU request," Glenda Wina, Burke's spokeswoman, told L.A. Daily News on Wednesday.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision to keep the Ten Commandments structure influenced other courts to rule against removing Ten Commandments monuments. Following the high court ruling, an appeals court reversed a decision to remove a Ten Commandment monument on the northeast corner of the courthouse in Gibson County, Ind., while another appeals court upheld a Ten Commandments monument in Plattsmouth, Neb.
In the opinion of the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the displays of the Ten Commandments "bespeak the rich American tradition of religious acknowledgments."
He added that the monument cannot be declared unconstitutional for "simply having religious content or promoting a message consistent with a religious doctrine."
Supporters of the keeping cross in the seal hold a similar argument, saying the cross is a historical and cultural symbol that recalls the importance of Catholic missions in the county's heritage.
The Board had voted 3-2 last June to remove the cross from the County Seal after the ACLU threatened suit unless the cross from the seal was removed, alleging that the image was unconstitutional because it represented a government endorsement of religion. Shortly after, the Board adopted a newly designed seal, in which the cross was replaced by a Christian church and the pagan goddess Pamona by a Native American woman, to replace the 1957 original County Seal.
