Virginia governor faces new hurdle in bid to remove Robert E. Lee statue
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-thanlife 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. Northam announced plans in June to remove the statue, citing the pain felt around the nation by Floyd’s killing.
Floyd’s death sparked a renewed wave of Confederate monument removals across the U.S., just like a violent 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville before it and a mass shooting at a historic African American church in South Carolina before that.
Should a court eventually clear the way, it won’t be a simple task to take down the 21-foot- equestrian statue of Lee, the military commander of the Confederacy that for nearly all of the Civil War had its seat in Richmond. The statue weighs about 12 tons (11 metric tonnes) and sits on a massive pedestal. Removal plan calls for cutting it into three sections for eventual reassembly elsewhere.
Richmond Circuit Court Judge W. Reilly Marchant wrote in the decision released Monday that “the public interest does weigh in favor” of a temporary injunction barring the statue’s removal.
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.
Plaintiff William C. Gregory, the great-grandson of land donors, had argued the state agreed to “faithfully guard” and “affectionately protect” the statue on historic Monument Avenue that is among the most prominent Confederate tributes in the U.S. His attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.