Last week's federal court ruling that 14 crosses erected along Utah roads to commemorate fallen state Highway Patrol officers violate the U.S. Constitution won't affect the descansos placed along New Mexico's highways.

That's the view of both state Attorney General Gary King as well as the atheist organization that fought the Utah crosses.

Last week, a three-judge panel from Denver's 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 38-page ruling that a "reasonable observer" would conclude that the state and the Utah Highway Patrol were endorsing Christianity with the cross memorials. "This may lead the reasonable observer to fear that Christians are likely to receive preferential treatment from the UHP," the judges wrote.

At issue in the Utah case were 14 12-foot-tall crosses first erected in 1998.

In 2008, King filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Utah, the Utah Highway Patrol, the Utah Highway Patrol Association and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty against a group called American Atheists in an appeal of a lower court decision that determined the crosses communicate a secular message about deaths and were not a public endorsement of religion.

David Silverman, a spokesman for American Atheists Inc. — the Texas-based group that sued to have the crosses removed from state property — said Monday that his group isn't concerned about New Mexico's roadside memorials.

There are major differences between the crosses and New Mexico's descansos — homemade memorials made by families and friends of those who died in auto accidents — which typically are small in size, Silverman said. He described the Utah crosses as "12-feet-tall permanent structures."

"If the state of New Mexico only allowed crosses, then we'd have a problem," Silverman said.

In March 2009, King traveled to Denver to attend oral arguments in the appeal.

"Although this case is currently specific to Utah, it could adversely affect New Mexico law that protects traditional descansos," King said in a news release before he went to Denver.

Phil Sisneros, a spokesman for King, said Monday that last week's ruling won't affect the descansos — although the territorial jurisdiction of the 10th circuit includes New Mexico — because they aren't "state-sponsored" like the Utah Highway Patrol crosses. While the crosses were paid for with private funds, they are affixed with the state highway patrol's beehive logo. Silverman said the Utah crosses are lighted and maintained by the state.

In the case of the descansos, the state of New Mexico does not construct or maintain them. But in 2007, the Legislature passed and the governor signed a law making it illegal to desecrate descansos. Though state highway crews are not required to preserve the memorials, by custom, road workers work around them during construction projects.

Lawyers for the Utah Highway Patrol argued that the cross isn't exclusively a symbol of Christianity. In 2006, the Utah Legislature passed a joint resolution declaring the cross a nonreligious, secular symbol of death.

The word descanso comes from the Spanish word meaning "rest." The memorials range from simple wooden crosses to elaborate wrought-iron creations. Often, handwritten notes, stones, rosaries and photographs of the victims are placed beside them. In New Mexico, descansos have been traced back to the early 1700s.

Contact Steve Terrell at 986-3037 or sterrell@sfnewmexican.com. Read his political blog at roundhouseroundup.com.