Dismissal of lawsuit over Columbus Day name change upheld

PHILADELPHIA >> A federal appeals court has upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that the mayor of Philadelphia discriminated against Italian Americans in renaming the city’s Columbus Day holiday to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

A U.S. District judge ruled a year ago that the plaintiffs, a council member and three Italian American heritage groups, hadn’t been harmed by Mayor Jim Kenney’s executive order, and therefore none of them had standing to sue over the issue.

Judge David Porter, writing for the three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday, said the government “does not violate the Equal Protection Clause every time it affirms or celebrates an ethnicity. Otherwise, Columbus Day itself would arguably have been an equal protection violation — but of course it wasn’t.”

As it stands, “Irish American city employees who wish to celebrate St. Patrick must take a personal day,” and the city doesn’t close for Yom Kippur or give time off for the Lunar New Year, the court said.

The plaintiffs might have a case if the city celebrated every ethnicity but “conspicuously excluded” Italian Americans, but not from selective celebration of particular ethnicities alone, the court said. For plaintiffs seeking redress for such an “offense,” the court said, “their remedy is political, not legal.”

Attorney George Bochetto, who filed the lawsuit, told The Philadelphia Inquirer in an email Friday evening that the plaintiffs are disappointed but he has “every intention” of appealing the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Many Italian Americans have embraced the 15th century explorer — once hailed as the discoverer of America — as a cultural hero and emblem of the city’s deep Italian heritage. Kenney has said that despite centuries of veneration, Columbus had a “much more infamous” history, enslaving Indigenous people and imposing harsh punishments.