The City of Los Angeles is trying to keep the Olvera Street merchants out of the federal appeal over a 1929 wooden cross that stands at the entrance to the city's oldest street. The families who have sold on that street since 1930 asked the Ninth Circuit on Aug. 24 to let them help defend the cross and the plaza Nativity. The city's own lawyers told them no.

Who is suing, and what does he want taken down?

Jack Gerritsen and a co-plaintiff, Henry Frederick Ramey Jr., sued the city and El Pueblo Park general manager Domenika Lynch in September 2025, seeking $5 million in damages plus an order against two displays at El Pueblo de Los Angeles: a hand-carved cross at the south entrance of Olvera Street, and the life-size Nativity that sits in the Old Plaza gazebo every Christmas season. Gerritsen alone appealed after losing, and the Ninth Circuit docket now runs under No. 26-3278.

In his own appellate brief he describes himself as a 90-year-old atheist who visits the park two or three times a month and sees the Nativity each November and December with no Santa Claus or reindeer nearby to secularize it. The cross went up in 1929 during Christine Sterling's campaign to save the block from demolition, and its arms are carved with the name of city founder Felipe de Neve and the date "September Fourth 1781." Gerritsen filed his complaint on September 4.

What the district court actually held

Judge R. Gary Klausner denied the preliminary injunction on May 14, 2026, without a hearing. On the cross he applied the presumption of constitutionality that the Supreme Court extended to longstanding religious monuments in American Legion v. American Humanist Association. On the Nativity he refused to, finding insufficient evidence that the display was long established, then upheld it anyway as part of the Las Posadas procession and a wider Christmas tradition.

That split is the soft spot in the record, and it is why the appeal is live at all. The city filed its answering brief on Aug. 17. Gerritsen replied the next day, which closed the briefing.

Why is the city fighting the people trying to help it?

The Olvera Street Merchants Association Foundation was formed in 2005 by vendors whose families have worked the street since 1930, and it runs the festivals that draw much of El Pueblo's reported 2 million annual visitors. Becket, the religious liberty firm representing them, argues the merchants hold an interest protected by the National Historic Preservation Act, since El Pueblo joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and the cross was named in the nomination form.

Their explanation for the city's resistance sits on the same page as the concession. A city has to weigh its general policy on religious displays and the risk of future litigation over other displays, and it holds a position on the Establishment Clause the merchants describe as "inherently fused with political considerations," which is why they say the city "may very well credit the Plaintiffs' alleged Establishment Clause claims." The merchants also note that the city never argued Gerritsen lacks standing and never briefed the framework from Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.

Gerritsen answered on Monday, and he is conceding nothing

The Ninth Circuit docketed his 30-page opposition on Aug. 31. He calls the merchants' filing an "Eleventh-Hour Filing," notes it arrived six days after briefing closed, and asks the court to strike the three merchant declarations as evidence never tested below. He singles out the claim that the Nativity goes back to at least the mid-1960s, which he says appears nowhere in the district court record the injunction ruling rests on.

His legal argument is harder to wave off. Permanent monuments on public land are government speech under Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, so private shopkeepers cannot claim a legal stake in what the city itself is saying. He adds that an injunction against a replaceable wooden cross and an official standalone Nativity would not touch Las Posadas, the Blessing of the Animals, Día de los Muertos, or the merchants' own sales.

What this fight is really about

Both sides agree the cross standing there today is not the one raised in 1929. The weathered original came down and, by Gerritsen's account, went on display at the Catholic church across the plaza. If American Legion shields a monument because a century of local meaning has attached to it, a replacement is a real question, and the panel will have to say something about it.

Nobody is taking a chainsaw to the cross this month. This appeal is from a denied preliminary injunction, and the court has not ruled on intervention either. But Becket attorney Andrea Butler told the Daily Signal that if Gerritsen ultimately wins, the effect "might be that the city was required to take them down permanently." She put it more bluntly to MyNewsLA: "Los Angeles shouldn't have to erase its own history every time someone takes offense."

For now the only lawyers defending the Olvera Street cross work for the city that is trying to keep the merchants off the brief.

Hero photo: the Olvera Street cross, by Another Believer via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.