Florida couple barred from putting small cross on lawn after it’s deemed prohibited ‘lawn ornament’

Wayne and Bonnie Anderson have been ticketed for hundreds of dollars in violations for maintaining a white cross on their garden.
REUTERS/Saad Shalash

Heaven assist them.

A Florida couple has misplaced their multi-year battle to put a miniature white cross on their entrance garden after a housing affiliation deemed it a prohibited “garden decoration,” in line with a report.

Wayne and Bonnie Anderson, of Tamarind Grove in The Villages, had been initially ordered to take away the tiny image in 2019 after group officers acquired an nameless criticism, Villages Information reported.

The couple, whose major house is in Wisconsin, have fought the prohibition for 3 years, arguing that it violates their rights below the Florida Non secular Freedom Restoration Act.

However Decide Michelle Morley lately dominated in favor of the native Neighborhood Growth District 8 after the physique argued that native guidelines explicitly prohibit “garden ornaments.”

The Andersons, who’ve been ticketed for hundreds of dollars in violations for his or her refusal to take away the cross, assert that they’ve been focused for “selective enforcement” and that different small garden shows — together with crosses — are left undisturbed.

The couple pointed to a Florida regulation that bars any “substantial” obstacle to the exercising of 1’s non secular beliefs.

However a number of boards and judges have discovered that the elimination of the cross doesn't qualify as a “substantial” burden and that the world’s garden decoration ban is a transparent rule.

The religiously-charged battle has turn out to be a divisive group challenge, with an area church defiantly passing out 200 crosses final yr and asking parishioners to put them of their yards.

Anderson referred to as the push to uproot the image “absurd” in 2020.

“We’ve obtained a pandemic happening and The Villages is obsessive about ripping crosses out of our yards,” he stated. “That is madness.”

The couple now has 30 days to problem the newest ruling towards them.

They couldn’t be instantly reached for touch upon the case.