Special Deputy City Attorney Ready to Take on any Mount Soledad Cross Legal Challenges

By Arthur Lightbourn

San Diego's politics gets "curiouser and curiouser."

Take Charles LiMandri and the controversial 29-foot-high Mount Soledad memorial cross, for example.

LiMandri is a Rancho Santa Fe trial lawyer and pro bono West Coast director of the Christian-oriented Thomas More Law Center. For the past year, LiMandri has been in the forefront of efforts to transfer the concrete cross and its surrounding walls and plaques located on a half-acre of city-owned land to the federal government for use as a national war memorial.

LiMandri, a Republican, was instrumental in getting Republican congressmen Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Duncan Hunter to author a bill signed into law by President Bush last December in which the federal government agreed to accept the land if San Diego should donate it.

"The City Council of San Diego, in a divided vote, voted on March 8 of this year not to donate the land because they thought it would just continue the litigation, and at the time [City Attorney] Mike Aguirre was advising them that he thought personally that it would be unconstitutional," LiMandri said.

In a special election July 26, San Diego voters approved the donation by a "yes" vote of 76 percent.

Then, in a move that surprised some city council members, Aguirre appointed LiMandri as a pro bono special deputy city attorney to handle any future court challenges to the transfer.

Although Aguirre was on record opposing the vote, he appointed LiMandri because, as he said, the "voters deserve their day in court" and LiMandri concurred that the voters' views should be presented "by someone who passionately believes in them."

ACLU-funded (American Civil Liberties Union) lawyer James McElroy, whose client Philip Paulson, a Vietnam vet and avowed atheist, filed the first lawsuit challenging the presence of the cross on public land in 1989, accused the city attorney's office of shirking its responsibility by appointing LiMandri, and opening the city to a new constitutional challenge by showing a preference for religion.

The first court challenge to the transfer is scheduled for Oct. 3. LiMandri will be representing the city before Superior Court Judge Patricia Yim Cowett who issued a temporary restraining order on the transfer after tentatively ruling that the transfer is unconstitutional.

We interviewed LiMandri in his law offices located in the Fairbanks Village Plaza.

The 50-year-old trial attorney looks a bit like actor Danny Aiello. He's 5 foot 10, 205 pounds, with a full head  of black hair that is beginning to silver, and a smile that undoubtedly goes a long way in and out of court.

He's also a practicing Catholic and father of five children.

On the wall of his conference room is a portrait of his favorite lawyer of all time: Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). As Chancellor of England, More got into deep trouble when he refused to sign an oath accepting Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church in England which cleared the way for Henry to have the Church of England annul his marriage to the Queen, Katherine of Aragon, so he could marry Anne Boleyn. More resigned, was subsequently arrested, tried, found guilty of treason and beheaded.

More, renowned for his piety, integrity and balanced judgment, in his lifetime, was regarded by contemporaries as a "man for all seasons" and 400 years after his death was canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

Of Sicilian heritage, LiMandri was born in San Diego's Mercy Hospital in 1955. He grew up in East County. His father, Joseph, was a union official.

"Curiously I went to grade school, St. John of the Cross in Lemon Grove, and I remember the old monsignor there in 1966 coming into our class and telling us about this movie that had just come out, 'A Man for All Seasons,' that we should see."

As it turned out, LiMandri didn't get to see the film until 10 years later after graduating from USD and while interning at the City Attorney's office in San Diego.

"It really inspired me that much more to want to be a lawyer and to try to build it up to some of the ideals that Thomas More reflected."

LiMandri attended St. Augustine High School, earned his B.A. in English, magna cum laude, from the University of San Diego; did graduate studies in 16th century English literature and the life and works of Sir Thomas More at Oxford University, studied international law and relations as a Rotary International Scholar at the University of Wales; and earned his J.D. at Georgetown University Law Center in 1983.

He met his future wife, Barbara, while both were studying abroad on Rotary scholarships.

LiMandri said he got involved in the Mount Soledad situation in June of 2004 when Proposition K was asking voters to remove the land from dedicated park status and sell it to the highest bidder. The proposition failed to get the required two/thirds vote.

That's when LiMandri sought the help of local Republican congressmen to get a bill passed for a transfer that, he believes, would be acceptable under the federal constitution.

LiMandri argues that the cross with its surrounding walls and plaques is part of a "fully integrated, multi-faceted world class war memorial." He says the cross is not a stand-alone religious symbol.

"The 29-foot cross is as its centerpiece, but with these large memorial concentric walls and these other secular features (plaques, pavers and flagpole) we feel it should pass Constitutional scrutiny under the federal Constitution."

The cross was initially constructed and erected in 1954 by the Mount Soledad Memorial Association and dedicated as a local memorial to military veterans. The memorial walls and other features were added to the site in 2000 by the Memorial Association and private contributors.

Philip Paulson's legal challenge to the cross's presence on public land resulted in 1991 federal court decision that the presence of the cross on public property violated the California Constitution and should be removed.

Two attempts by the city to privatize the land by selling it to the Mount Soledad Memorial Association failed.

"Although the opposition keeps saying this is like a Christian right-wing conspiracy to save the cross, people of different faiths realize that once you start going after religious symbols on public property, everyone's religious symbols are fair game."

"There's an old Jewish synagogue on city property in Old Town; there's a Shinto bell on Shelter Island; there's a Japanese prayer garden in Balboa Park. Our local history, although it was originally Judeo-Christian because it was founded by Spanish missionaries, now reflects a rich cultural and religious diversity. Our position is we should seek to preserve that heritage."

"We're not seeking to have other people's religious symbols removed, and we don't want Christian religious symbols removed simply because Christians are still the majority. Latest Newsweek poll came out a week ago that 90 percent of the people in the country believe in God; 85 percent are Christian; only 6 percent say they are atheist, agnostic or nondenominational and have no type of belief," LiMandri said.

"And that's fine. Those people who are in the minority keep trying to twist and distort the Constitution so that the so-called separation of church and state means someone almost has to be hostile to religion and not allow any religious expression in the public square, which is never what the Founding Fathers intended."

On its website, the Michigan-headquartered Thomas More Law Center describes itself as a "not-for-profit public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values and the sanctity of human life."

Its purpose, it states, "is to be the sword and shield for people of faith, providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square."

LiMandri predicts the case may eventually end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, and with the current changes in the make-up of the court, it will be this case or one like it that's "going to put the law back on track for religious symbols on public property."