Plaintiff Arguments

• The WTC girder cross is insensitive to the concerns and reflections to all non-Christians who suffered in the 9/11 attacks.  It marginalizes and renders invisible all those who do not share in the Christian faith or in the worship of this symbol.
• Given the millions of tax dollars provided to build the museum, this insertion of religious typography is a clear violation of the separation of church and state mandated in the Establishment clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution.  The government has permitted a symbol of Christianity to represent all Americans in the 9/11 tragedy.
• The 9/11 Memorial & Museum clearly also falls under the jurisdiction of Article 4, Section 40 of New York’s Civil Rights Act, which specifically includes “any such public library, kindergarten, primary and secondary school, academy, college, university, professional school, extension course, or other educational facility, supported in whole or in part by public funds or by contributions solicited from the general public.” The same article specifically prohibits the privileging of any one religious or racial group over any other at such institutions.
• The 9/11 girder cross does not represent all of the victims. Among the 2,792 individuals documented as having perished in the 9/11 attack, at least 31 were Muslim Americans, approximately 400-500 were Jewish Americans, and approximately 500 of Americans held no religious beliefs, based on disclosures made by the victims’ families. And those are only the ones we know, the actual numbers of non-Christians who died are probably even higher.
• Providing a symbol of one religious denomination to represent the victims of the 9/11 attacks is discriminatory against all other religious and secular groups that suffered similar losses in their own communities.
• Using any symbol, religious or otherwise, which clearly represents only one segment of US society is a betrayal of the foundational American value of the diversity and plurality of Americans as indicated in the national motto: E Pluribus Unum, From Many, One.
• The 9/11 attack was religiously motivated.  Many Americans would and do find it grossly insensitive that a religious symbol would be used to commemorate this attack.
• The 9/11 girder cross in the 9/11 Memorial and Museum is not only insensitive, but hypocritical. Those who opposed the establishment of a private Muslim community center near to but unconnected with the 9/11 attacks or the World Trade Center as ‘insensitive’ have far more reason to complain of insensitivity with the placement of another reminder of religion placed not just nearby, but within the very bowels of the memorial.
• The WTCMF’s website, www.911Memorial.org, which is a major tool for the WTCMF and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum to solicit contributions from the general public, misleads and hides the fact that the 9/11 Memorial and Museum contains and prominently displays the 9/11 girder cross.
• If this religious symbol is allowed to stand in this taxpayer-funded and public memorial, it will set a precedent that will further undermine and render impotent the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution as well as similar clauses in most, if not all, the US state constitutions, including the state constitution of New York.