For more than 90 years, a huge concrete cross has dominated part of Bladensburg, Maryland, a Washington, D.C. suburb. On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will be asked to decide whether it stays, raising a question that has vexed the justices for decades: What is the proper place for religion in American public life?

To its defenders, which include the state and the American Legion, the 40-foot-tall Peace Cross is a secular monument, a memorial to area war dead. To its detractors, it's an unconstitutional government endorsement of religion invoking Christianity's most potent symbol.

Completed in 1925, it was built to commemorate 49 servicemen who died in World War I. Their names are on a bronze plaque at the base. Private funds paid for the cross, but a state commission took it over in 1961 as well as the land it sits on, which is now in a busy traffic interchange.

In 2012, the American Humanist Association filed a lawsuit, claiming that its presence on public land violates the Constitution, amounting to a government establishment of religion. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia agreed, saying it could not ignore that "for thousands of years the Latin cross has represented Christianity."