Richmond Can Remove Last Confederate Statue, Judge Rules
(NAPSI)—The City of Richmond can remove its last remaining Confederate statue, a judge ruled.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the 5-3 decision by Circuit Judge Richard Moore on Friday is part of a two-year legal battle that began in 2007 when the Richmond City Council sought to change its statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a monument to a street.
The council voted in May 2007 to have the statue moved from the Monument Square to a parking lot on the intersection of St. Paul and 7th avenues, but the city had to file a lawsuit to try to keep the statue there. Attorney William J. Moore, who argued the case in state court, sued the City of Richmond in July of 2007, hoping that it would remove the statue.
“There’s no more defiling of the City’s monument to Lee,” Moore wrote in his motion for summary judgment in December of 2008, the Times-Dispatch reports.
Attorneys for Moore argued that the statue was too big a symbol in the city and that the removal would cost the city a lot of money and cause the public to accept something of lesser importance, Moore tells the newspaper.
The city argued that the statue was too important to be moved and that it would cost too much to replace it.
A Virginia state court ruled Tuesday in favor of the city, saying the statue should be taken down. State Judge Kevin Lynch declared the statue “unnecessary, not symbolic and not appropriate” and ordered its immediate removal.
A city clerk told the newspaper he had no plans to take down the statue, but did not know when it would be removed and said he didn’t know if it still was in the parking lot.
Attorney William J. Moore with the Richmond-Times Dispatch reports The Times-Dispatch:
“[W]hat we saw from our point of view from the beginning to the end was a judge who
