New injunction on Lee statue ordered

RICHMOND, Va. — A judge dismissed a legal challenge Monday that had been blocking Virginia officials from removing a towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee from the state’s capital city, but he immediately imposed another injunction against dismantling the figure.

The new 90-day injunction bars Gov. Ralph Northam’s administration from “removing, altering, or dismantling, in any way” the larger-than-life statue of Lee on a prominent Richmond avenue while claims in a lawsuit filed by local property owners are litigated.

Now covered in graffiti, the Lee monument has become a focal point and gathering spot amid Richmond’s sustained anti-racist protests since the police custody death in Minnesota of a Black man, George Floyd.

Richmond Circuit Judge W. Reilly Marchant wrote in a decision released Monday that “the public interest does weigh in favor” of a temporary injunction barring the statue’s removal.

In the property owners’ case, the group argues that removing the Lee statue — the last Confederate statue now standing on Monument Avenue — could result in the loss of the neighborhood’s National Historic Landmark designation, “which will have a substantial adverse impact, ” including the loss of “favorable tax treatment and reduction in property values.”

Separately, Marchant dismissed entirely as not “legally viable” the claims filed by a descendant of signatories to an 1890 deed that transferred the statue to the state, and he dissolved an existing injunction in that case.