LOS ANGELES — Los Angeles County supervisors, faced with a lawsuit to remove a tiny gold cross from the county seal, have voted to remove the cross, but the Roman goddess Pomona will stay.
County supervisors voted June 1 to remove the cross, which was incorporated into the seal’s original 1957 design to represent the Catholic missions founded by Jesuit missionaries.
The American Civil Liberties Union had said the cross represented an “impermissible endorsement of Christianity” and was “unconstitutional” as a violation of the separation of church and state.
The seal, which appears on all county vehicles, meeting rooms and employee badges, also features a Spanish galleon, a tuna fish, a dairy cow, the Hollywood Bowl, engineering tools, oil derricks and Pomona, the goddess of gardens and fruit trees, to represent agriculture.
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