A 6-foot tall statue of Jesus that has spent the last 60 years overlooking a northwestern Montana ski hill may stay there, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected arguments from a group of atheists and agnostics that allowing the statue to remain on U.S. Forest Service land violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
Two members of the three-judge panel agreed with U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen of Montana, who found that the statue’s secular and irreverent uses outweighed its religious uses.