It looks like opposing faith in the public square just got a little harder in the Lone Star State.

The city of Corpus Christi, Texas, is the home of actress Eva Longoria, the Whataburger fast food chain, and is once again on track to be the future home of the tallest cross in the Americas, thanks to a lawsuit settlement reached on Tuesday, after the plaintiff in the case conceded that the effort to block the cross’ construction was “baseless,” “vexatious,” and “without merit.”

The cross, which is meant to loom at least 210 feet over the coastal Texas city along I-37, was originally conceived by Pastor Rick Milby of Abundant Life Fellowship.

The lawsuit was filed against Milby by Patrick Greene of San Antonio against who, in addition to being a serial plaintiff in several other “separation of church and state” lawsuits, thinks the cross is “tacky as hell.” As a part of Tuesday’s court-approved settlement, he agreed to a “covenant not to sue,” which means he will stop filing merit-less lawsuits over rights guaranteed in the First Amendment or face stiff legal consequences.

The case sends the message that lawsuits about the free exercise of religion actually have to require a little bit of standing, explained Jeremy Dys, Senior Counsel at Texas-based First Liberty Institute, whose organization represented Milby, during a phone interview after the decision was announced.

“You can’t just go around throwing out baseless lawsuits and threats of baseless lawsuits against people who wish to exercise their religious liberty like pastor Milby did,” said Dys. “The settlement sends a message out across the country that, in order to avoid any legal consequences, your lawsuits and threats of lawsuits have got to grounded in both fact and law.

“You cannot simply use the legal system to bully people around. You can’t use baseless lawsuits to simply protest something you don’t like. That’s not what the legal system is for.”

The official groundbreaking ceremony for the record-setting structure, which is currently slated to become the largest in the western hemisphere, began in February of this year and was attended by Corpus Christi Mayor Nelda Martinez, Councilwoman Carolyn Vaughn, and Councilwoman Lucy Rubio.

Little did those in attendance know that the ceremony itself was just one of the things that would set off Greene’s distaste for religious symbols in the public square.

Shortly after Milby began construction on the edifice, Greene sued, claiming that the officials mentioned above violated the Constitution in attending the event and that Milby also did so in inviting them.

“When I saw the mayor in her official position and the council in their official positions were attending a groundbreaking ceremony for a Christian symbol – that smacked right in the face of the Constitution of the state of Texas,” Greene told Fox News in March.

Milby was inspired to build the cross after seeing a similar one on a drive through Houston with his family in 2013.

“As we drew closer to the cross, we were amazed at its enormous size,” Milby says of the instance according to First Liberty’s website. “The entire time of our vacation, that image of the cross was on my mind.”

Milby, a convert to Christianity himself, was convinced to build the cross after he met with church leaders at the congregation in Houston that built the structure. In the meeting, Milby says they shared “story after story about lives that were changed, suicides that were aborted, and relationships that were restored because of the influence of the cross.”

This is far from Greene’s first lawsuit of the sort. In December 2013, he filed a lawsuit against the city of Athens, Texas, in the hopes having a courthouse nativity removed from public view and has also sued Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro for participating in the National Day of Prayer while in his capacity as Mayor of San Antonio.

“Mr. Greene has a track record of using baseless lawsuits to harass people over any expression of faith he doesn’t like. In this case, he sued a pastor over a cross on church property that hasn’t even been built yet,” reads an earlier statement about the case from Dys. “Since Mr. Greene is using the legal system to attack people of faith, we feel the appropriate response is to use the law to stop him.”

Greene briefly converted to Christianity in 2012 before returning to atheism, saying that he “got all caught up in the excitement.”

The cost of the cross’ construction should total $1 million, according to a report at the Houston Chronicle, over $100,000 had already been raised when the building project officially kicked off a few months ago.