Whitefish, MT – A Wisconsin-based atheist group has vowed a court fight after the U.S. Forest Service this week reversed an earlier decision to deny a permit for a plot of land upon which a statue of Jesus has sat for decades at Whitefish Mountain Resort.

“The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) will be suing the U.S. Forest Service over the unconstitutional presence of a Knights of Columbus shrine to Jesus in Flathead National Forest in Montana,” the group said in a statement released on Tuesday. “FFRF has readied a legal complaint and plans to file it shortly in federal court in Montana.”

The statue sits on U.S. Forest Service Land leased to Whitefish Mountain Resort through a Special Use Permit. It was first erected in 1953 by members of the local Knights of Columbus, a fraternal Roman Catholic organization, including many veterans of World War II who modeled it after statues they saw in the Alps during the war. The FFRF called upon the Forest Service to remove the statue as part of a 10-year renewal on the lease, citing a breach of the separation of church and state. The Forest Service first agreed before rescinding its original order on Oct. 21 and extending the comment period on the new lease to Dec. 8.

That sparked a local firestorm both for and against the statue. U.S. Rep Denny Rehberg (R-MT) even proposed legislation authorizing a land swap so that the statue would sit on private land not subject to permitting issues.

Earlier on Tuesday, Flathead National Forest Supervisor Chip Weber issued a memo documenting his decision to reauthorize the Knights of Columbus Special Use Permit on Big Mountain.

“The statue has been a long standing object in the community since 1953,” Weber wrote. “Public comments were accepted from October 19 to December 8, 2011. During this period, approximately 95,000 public comments were received. All comments were evaluated by the project team. No issues related to resource conditions were brought forth to indicate further analysis or documentationin an EA (Environmental Analysis) or EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) was warranted.”

Rehberg dropped his land swap plan upon learning of Weber’s decision that allows the six-foot tall statue to remain for the next 10 years on its site near the top of chairlift #2 at Whitefish Mountain Resort.  But the FFRF has promised a protracted battle in court over the approval.

“A federal agency should not hold a vote on whether to obey the Constitution!”Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president, said of the Forest Service’s comment period. “The U.S. Forest Service has unlawfully misused federal land owned by all of us to further Christianity in general, and Roman Catholicism in particular. This diminishes the civil and political standing of nonreligious and non-Christian Americans, and shows flagrant governmental preference for religion and Christianity.”