NEWS

Virginia Supreme Court denies rehearing of Lee statue removal, permanently ends lawsuit

Bill Atkinson
The Progress-Index
A close-up of the Robert E. Lee statue on Monument Avenue is shown here moments after being lifted from its pedestal on Sept. 8, 2021

RICHMOND — The state Supreme Court put a lid Thursday on the ongoing battle between the state and a Richmond citizen over the former Robert E. Lee memorial by denying a request to rehear the case.

In a one-page document issued Thursday afternoon, Virginia's high court shot down Helen Marie Taylor's motion to reverse its Sept. 2 decision that cleared the way for the statue's removal six days later. With this decision, the case now is considered closed.

Taylor's attorneys took the issue to the Supreme Court after a Richmond Circuit Court judge ruled against them in a lawsuit to block the takedown of the Virginia-owned statue from its 130-year perch on Richmond's iconic Monument Avenue. Gov. Ralph Northam, who earlier got the General Assembly to enact legislation allowing removal of Confederate monuments from publicly owned property, was named as the chief defendant in the suit.

A statement from Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring's office praised the decision, calling the latest request from the plaintiffs "a last-ditch effort" that "has failed and the case and reached the end of the line."

Herring spokesperson Charlotte Gomer said in the statement that Herring "believes it is time for the commonwealth to move away from a past when leaders of a racist insurrection were glorified to a future that tells our whole history fully and truthfully."

Several citizens sought to block the destruction of the memorial, claiming that it violated an historic deed between the original backers of the statue and the state not to allow it to be taken down. But the Richmond court decided and the Supreme Court validated that a deed does not supersede the state's right to do what it wants to do with its own property.

The bronze sculpture of Lee on a horse was removed from its pedestal Sept. 8, cut into two sections and taken away by the state for storage until a decision is made on its ultimate fate. Its pedestal remains in the traffic circle tagged with graffiti from protesters in last summer's Richmond rallies for judicial equality stemmed by the high-profile police-involved deaths of two Black persons in Minnesota and Kentucky.

It was the last of several monuments honoring Southern leaders during the Civil War, and the only one owned by the state. The others were owned by the city of Richmond, who promptly removed them in July 2020 when the Confederate statue law went into effect.

State officials are working with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts on a plan for the future of the pedestal. Those plans include the possibility of turning it into some sort of civil-rights remembrance.

Veteran journalist Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is the regional daily news coach for the USA TODAY Network Southeast Region's Unified Central group, which includes Virginia, West Virginia and portions of North Carolina. He is based at The Progress-Index in Petersburg, Virginia. Contact Bill at batkinson@progress-index.com, and follow him on Twitter at @BAtkinson_PI.