 Soledad National Veterans Memorial.Beginning in 1989, almost ten years before the immediate area around the cross was turned into a war memorial, until 2015, the Mount Soledad Cross was involved in continuous litigation regarding its legal status.The cross's opponents won court decisions showing that it is illegal to display a religious symbol, such as a Christian cross, on public land, as it demonstrates preference to a specific religion and thus violates the separation of church and state under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the No Preference Clause of the California Constitution.