Bid to Put Restoration of Cross on County Seal to a Vote Fails

A petition drive for a ballot measure to reinstate the old Los Angeles County government seal, with its controversial gold cross, has collapsed.

Organizers missed this week’s deadline to gather the roughly 171,000 voter signatures needed to put the issue on the next countywide ballot. A spokeswoman for the effort, Sandy Needs, said that 105,000 to 110,000 signatures were collected before the six-month deadline.

The petition drive began after a majority of county supervisors, responding to the threat of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union, voted in June to remove the cross that had adorned the seal since 1957. As part of a compromise, the seal now has the image of a Christian mission without a cross.

Needs said the organizers, who sought signatures largely outside of churches after Sunday services, aren’t sure whether they would try again. She said the weather in recent weeks “certainly made it very difficult for the final push.”

Many supporters of the campaign saw the removal of the cross as a rebuke to the region’s missionary history and a challenge to Christianity. But opponents argued that a cross on a government seal was unconstitutional.

Three lawsuits have been filed challenging the removal of the cross. A federal judge dismissed one of the suits in October.

That decision is being appealed, and all three legal challenges await a ruling from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.