Bowing to the pressure of a threatened lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted 3 to 2 to remove a small cross from the county seal.
In late May, the ACLU sent the county a letter saying that the "Latin cross" on the seal is a religious symbol and represents government-sponsored Christianity. The letter gave the county two weeks to act to avoid a lawsuit.
With about a thousand protestors outside the county building on June 8, the Board met with representatives from the ACLU and eventually voted to remove the seal, and replace it with depictions of a Spanish mission and Native Americans.
The Board instructed county staff to come back in 30 days with a proposed new seal as well as a plan of action for replacing the current seal on thousands of county worker ID badges, automobiles, business cards, letterheads and various other places.
County spokeswoman Judy Hammond said removing the cross from the seal will cost the county "untold thousands and thousands of dollars" because the image appears in so many places.
Hammond said the ACLU did not demand any sort of timeline for the replacement of the seal, and she noted that the county will replace the seal on items like business cards and letterheads as supplies diminish. The difficult part will be replacing ornamental seals on buildings.
The late county Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, who is also the father of the current L.A. Mayor, designed the county seal. The seal was adopted in 1957, and according to the younger Hahn, the symbol represents a cross at the Pilgrimage Theater near the Hollywood Bowl. The seal also features the Pomona, the pagan goddess of fruits and trees. The ACLU did not question Pomona, although some county residents have now threatened to sue to have Pomona removed if the cross is removed.
According to Hammond, the county has been flooded with phone calls and e-mails over the issue. She said people have been e-mailing from the county, throughout the state and throughout the country, and although it’s nearly impossible to pin a specific number on which way the calls are going, she said most of the calls and e-mails are from individuals opposing the Board’s decision.
"This is the largest amount of outrage to a county issue we’ve ever seen," said John Musella, spokesman for the Don Knabe, Board of Supervisors chairman. Knabe opposed the ACLU agreement.
On June 4, the Thomas More Law Center filed a lawsuit in federal court to keep the cross on the seal. The center filed the suit on behalf of Ernesto Vasquez, a county employee "who objects to the removal of the cross because it sends a government-sponsored message of hostility toward Christians, in violation of the U.S. Constitution."
This is not the first time the issue has come up in the county. Back in 1994, the American Jewish Congress urged Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke to have the cross removed. Although Burke drafted a motion to have it removed, the supervisors at the time never voted on the motion. Burke voted in favor of the removal this time around.
The ACLU’s threatened lawsuit came after the organization threatened to sue Redlands, Calif. for a cross on its city seal. The city agreed to remove its cross before the lawsuit was filed. Interestingly, the organization has said it will not pursue litigation over a rosary that is part of the City of Los Angeles’ seal.
"Los Angeles County is the most diverse county in the United States, and if the city of Redlands decided it had to do something, we think the County of Los Angeles should also," ACLU Executive Director Ramona Ripston wrote in her letter to the county.
In a last ditch effort to save the cross, Supervisor Michael Antonovich made a motion at a June 15 meeting to put the issue on the ballot in November; however, the motion failed 2-3.