Las Cruces Without The Crosses

The city of Las Cruces, New Mexico created a logo for their town: three Christian crosses. Before this could be enacted, a citizen of the city had filed a lawsuit through the American Civil Liberties Union, saying that “government's use of crosses violated the First Amendment by endorsing and advancing a religion”. The suit was dismissed on Friday by Judge Robert Brack, who declared that “When there is no evidence of the original purpose for adopting a practice, the government may propose possible secular justifications for the challenged practice”.

This brings the American idea of the separation of church and state into the question. While I believe that the church should ideally be completely separate from state affairs, how can we expect that a city with a name of Las Cruces to use anything but a cross for their symbol. As Mayor Bill Mattiace responded, “The logo [is] ‘the signature and the spirit of what [the citizens of Las Cruces] call home’”. In theory, the lawsuit should be filed to change the name of the town, right?