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FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) – Virginia’s highest court ruled Thursday that the city of Charlottesville may tear down two statues of Confederate generals, including that of Robert E. Lee, which has become the center of a violent white nationalist rally in 2017.
State Supreme Court overturned a Circuit Court ruling in favor of a group of residents who have filed a lawsuit to prevent the city from destroying the statue of Lee and a nearby monument to his compatriot General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Charlottesville City Council voted to remove both.
White supremacist and neo-Nazi organizers of the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville said they traveled to the city to defend the statue of Lee. They clashed with counter-protesters before a man plunged his car into the crowd of people, killing a woman.
The Jackson statue was erected in Jackson Park in 1921 and the Lee statue was erected in Lee Park in 1924. In 1918, the city had accepted a resident’s offer to donate land for the parks for both. statutes.
In Thursday’s ruling, state Supreme Court Justice Bernard Goodwyn said the two statues were erected long before legislation was passed regulating the “disturbance or interference” of monuments or war monuments.
“In other words, (the law) did not give the city the power to erect the statues, and it does not prohibit the city from disturbing or interfering with them,” Goodwyn wrote.
S. Braxton Puryear, one of the lawyers for the residents who sued, said he had not yet read the decision and could not immediately comment. Frederick W. Payne, a Charlottesville attorney who was on the list of top plaintiffs in the lawsuit to block the statue’s removal, also declined to comment on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the city of Charlottesville did not immediately respond to a call and email requesting comment on the court decision.
The Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc. and The Monument Fund, Inc., were also plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the city in March 2017.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that a law passed by the state’s General Assembly in 1997 prevented the city from removing the two Confederate statues. The city argued that the law could not be applied retroactively and did not apply to statues that cities erected before 1997.
The state Supreme Court agreed with the city, concluding that no wording in the statute demonstrated the intention of the General Assembly that the law apply to monuments or memorials that cities erected before 1997 .
“The circuit court erred in not interpreting the law according to its plain language meaning,” Goodwyn wrote.
The state Supreme Court also ruled that the circuit court erred in ordering the city to pay the fees and expenses of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The 1997 law that prohibited local governments from removing Confederate statutes was repealed in 2020, after Democrats took control of the General Assembly in the 2019 elections. Since then, local governments in the state have removed statues that stood for a century or more.
The new law places certain requirements on local governments seeking to remove a statue, such as holding a public hearing and offering the statue to a museum or historical society for possible relocation. In Thursday’s ruling, the judges indicate in a footnote that they are making their decision based on the old law.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring said he determined nearly four years ago that the law purported to block the removal of Confederate statues did not apply retroactively and “was not the general prohibition that his supporters had claimed to be ”. Thursday’s decision “confirmed that we were right,” Herring added in a statement.
“I have worked hard to help remove toxic Confederate propaganda from our public spaces because I believe it glorifies a false story and sends a dangerous and divisive message about who and what we value,” he said. declared.
In Richmond, city officials have removed numerous statues on the city’s famous Monument Avenue after they became a focal point for racial justice protests last summer. But a statue of Lee has not yet been removed; a lawsuit is underway to determine whether the statue, which is on state property and is subject to an 1890 deed that claims to restrict its removal, can be dismantled.
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Kunzelman reported from College Park, Maryland.
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