CIMA, California  -- Driving along a pockmarked road amid rocks and Joshua trees in a lonely southern California desert, religious controversy might be the last thing you'd expect to encounter.



A judge ruled the Mojave Cross must be covered until a First Amendment issue can be resolved.



And if you don't look too closely, you're likely to zip right past the focus of a hotly contested Supreme Court battle.



A federal judge has ordered the Mojave Cross, a war memorial erected by a veterans group 75 years ago, to be covered. It's boxed in plywood.



The issue is less about what the cross symbolizes and more about where it sits: In the middle of the Mojave National Preserve, which is government land.



The high court on Wednesday will consider whether the display violates the First Amendment's provision for a separation of church and state.  Watch details of the cross case »



More specifically, does an individual who protests the cross have legal standing to take the case to court? Do congressional efforts to minimize the appearance of a constitutional violation carry any weight?  View details on other cases awaiting the Supreme Court »



"Religion is always very hard fought in the Supreme Court, and this is no exception," said Thomas Goldstein, a Washington appellate attorney and co-founder of scotusblog.com.



"A single cross on a single plot of land has given rise to this huge constitutional controversy. The court will look at whether Congress, with a kind of wink and a nod, (can) say that this governmental cross is now on private land or are we (going to) say, no this is a governmental war monument and it has a religious symbol on it."



Riley Bembry, who served as a medic in World War I, helped erect the cross in 1934. It sits on a 4,000-foot plateau and was a place of reflection for many vets who retreated to the desert in part to recover from severe lung diseases caused by mustard gas attacks during the Great War. An annual Easter service is held there, but until recently only locals knew about it. The site is not on any maps.  Watch a video about the Mojave monument »



Bembry never got permission from the government to erect the cross, but for decades nobody seemed to care. He was the caretaker of the memorial for five decades until he died in 1984.



In 1994, 1.6 million acres of desert -- including the land with the cross on it -- was transferred to the National Park Service. A few years later, a resident wanted to put up a Buddhist shrine near the cross. The request was denied.



Frank Buono, a former deputy superintendent of the preserve, filed a lawsuit with the help of the ACLU, claiming federal officials were acting unfairly.



"He thinks that the government is in effect misappropriating this sacred symbol and trying to give it just a secular meaning," said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney of the ACLU of Southern California.



"It strikes me as sort of odd that it just happens to be in that shape," Eliasberg said. "If what they really wanted to do was have a war memorial, there are hundreds of other shapes that it could be in. ... Mr. Buono does not have an objection to the government having a war memorial there that's in the shape of a soldier, or that's in the shape of the Vietnam memorial."



A federal court ordered the cross removed earlier this decade. A judge ruled that until the dispute is settled the cross had to be covered.



In 2001 Congress got involved. Lawmakers prohibited the Park Service from spending federal dollars to remove the display. A year later, they designated the site a national memorial similar to the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore.



More importantly, the Republican-led Congress agreed to transfer one acre of land around the cross in exchange for five private acres inside the preserve. A San Francisco, California-based appeals court turned that offer down, saying it failed to satisfy Constitutional concerns.



The land swap "would leave a little donut hole of
What shape is the memorial in? Where is the memorial located? What is the shape of the war memorial? Where is the cross located? What amendment might the memorial violate? What could the display possibly violate?
Cross, the Mojave National Preserve, cross California First the First Amendment's provision for a separation of church and state.
question: What shape is the memorial in?, answer: Cross, | question: Where is the memorial located?, answer: the Mojave National Preserve, | question: What is the shape of the war memorial?, answer: cross | question: Where is the cross located?, answer: California | question: What amendment might the memorial violate?, answer: First | question: What could the display possibly violate?, answer: the First Amendment's provision for a separation of church and state.