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Why was this year's Easter service at San Francisco's Mount Davidson cross different from all other Easter services at the base of the landmark?

After a lengthy legal battle over the separation of church and state, ownership of the land on which the 103-foot-high symbol stands has been transferred from the city to a private organization, the Council of Armenian American Organizations of Northern California.

Thus, where past services and lighting the cross may have raised the ire of some local Jews involved in the fight to divest the city of ownership, this year's sunrise service — the first since the Armenian group spared the cross from possible demolition — was another story altogether.

"What you had this Easter was a traditional exercise of personal free speech rights…that's the difference," said Fred Blum, an American Jewish Congress attorney who helped represent the plaintiffs in a seven-year legal battle against the city of San Francisco.

The AJCongress joined the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State in representing private citizens of various faiths who sued San Francisco in 1990. The Anti-Defamation League filed a friend of the court brief.

The cross-lighting was in limbo from then until now.

In March of last year, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the city's appeal of a 1996 ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that declared the cross' presence on public land unconstitutional.

In July, the Armenian organization purchased the site for $26,000 at a public auction. It plans to preserve the 63-year-old cross as a landmark and adopt it as a memorial to the Armenian genocide. San Francisco voters approved the sale in November.

The AJCommittee originally suggested the land be sold as a way of diffusing the often acrimonious debate that arose in the wake of the lawsuit being filed.

Last month, the Board of Supervisors Finance Committee approved a $572,815 settlement in the lawsuit brought by the civil rights groups. A judge was scheduled to sign the settlement agreement this week.

Meanwhile, when a party sues the government over a violation of constitutional rights and wins, that party is entitled to have its legal fees paid by the government. The AJCongress will thus recover about $90,000 in attorneys' fees, according to Blum, though the organization does not yet know what it will do with the money.

San Francisco's battle to save the cross has so far cost nearly $1 million in legal expenses.