For years, the United States Department of Veterans Affairs maintained an approved list of religious emblems that could be engraved on government-provided headstones and markers for veterans buried in national and other qualifying cemeteries, a list that included symbols for numerous Christian denominations, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and a range of other recognized religions, but which did not include the pentacle, the circumscribed five-pointed star widely used as a symbol of Wiccan religious identity. Wiccan veterans and their families seeking to have the pentacle added to the approved list found their requests repeatedly delayed without resolution over a period of roughly a decade.
The issue came to a head following the death of Patrick Stewart, a Wiccan chaplain's assistant killed in action in Afghanistan in 2005, whose widow sought to have a pentacle placed on his headstone and encountered the same unresolved delay other Wiccan families had faced. Together with several other affected families, she and advocacy organizations including the Lady Liberty League and Americans United for Separation of Church and State brought legal action against the Department of Veterans Affairs, arguing that the exclusion amounted to unconstitutional religious discrimination in a government program.
Facing the lawsuit and continued public pressure, the Department of Veterans Affairs agreed in April 2007 to add the pentacle to its approved list of emblems, resolving the specific legal dispute and, more broadly, the underlying question of Wiccan symbol recognition on veterans' government-provided memorials.