City Council members seeking to remove them argued that they were actually monuments to white supremacy
The Circuit judge, Richard E. Moore, ruled that the statues, depicting the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, are war memorials and
are thus covered by a state law prohibiting such memorials’ removal by local governments. The decision comes nearly two years after a deadly white supremacist rally in
Charlottesville that was organised to protest a plan to move one of the statues and left one counterprotester dead.
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