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Jewish players in the fight to declare unconstitutional a cross on San Francisco's Mount Davidson rejoiced this week over the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to hear the city's appeal in the case.

The decision ends a seven-year legal battle over whether San Francisco can own and maintain the 103-foot structure on city-owned land.

It also sends a loud and clear message: "You can't do it," in the words of Fred Blum, the attorney representing American Jewish Congress, a plaintiff in the case.

Yet what the city will now do to divest itself of the large religious symbol, located on city-owned property, remains to be seen. A move is afoot to transfer the land to private hands.

Among proponents of that solution is the American Jewish Committee, which has proposed that a coalition of religious and secular groups raise money to buy the land.

That suggestion, the AJCommittee said, was spurred by the often acrimonious debate that has arisen over the cross since 1990, when a lawsuit was brought against the city and county of San Francisco by plaintiffs who included Jews.

"Fundamentally, the intent of the AJCommittee was to see if we could possibly remove what was clearly friction, much of it aimed at Jews," said Ernest Weiner, the organization's executive director. "To counter that, there had to be a solution that did not in any way remove the distinction between church and state."

That separation is at the heart of the high-profile case, whose plaintiffs include the AJCongress, American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and private citizens of various faiths.

Among those citizens are Rabbi Allen Bennett, spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Alameda; the Rev. Victor Carpenter, former minister of the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco; and Buddhist priest Ronald Naksone.

The Anti-Defamation League filed a friend of the court brief.

Plaintiffs claimed the cross violates the state and federal constitutions' mandate for separation of church and state, and demanded that the city either sell the property to private owners or remove the symbol. They argued that the symbol's presence on taxpayer-supported property offends non-Christians.

"The city of San Francisco said that the cross was a symbol of all San Francisco," Blum said. "That tells me I can't be considered a part of San Francisco."

Monday, the nation's highest court refused to hear the city's appeal of an August 1996 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that deemed the cross' placement on public property unconstitutional.

That ruling, which overturned a 1992 district court ruling in favor of the city, cited the cross' lack of historical significance and the absence of other symbols nearby. The latter is a violation of the state's no-preference clause, the court said.

The Supreme Court move "is a victory for religious freedom," said Margaret Crosby, staff attorney of the ACLU's Northern California chapter. "The court has once again told government that it has no business promoting the symbols of favored religions."

Added Crosby: "The religious leaders who brought this case — a Baptist pastor, a rabbi, a Unitarian minister and a Buddhist priest — understand that the separation of church and state strengthens religion by promoting tolerance and ensuring that faith is a matter of individual conscience."

Earlier this year, San Francisco's Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board voted to bestow landmark status on the symbol, a move seen as a first step in efforts to keep the cross intact.

That declaration must now be approved by the full San Francisco Planning Commission as well as by the board of supervisors.