Confederate Statues and State Preemption Statutes
This webinar will discuss the rise of the use of state “statue statutes” to prevent local governments form removing Confederate statuary, with implications for municipal attorneys across the country. The debate over Confederate iconography has been hugely divisive and in some cases has led to violence, as in Charlottesville in August 2017. These controversies have also led to litigation over the ability for local governments to remove Confederate statues. The webinar will examine the history of Confederate monument building, the nature of the laws that restrict their removal, and the types of legal challenges that have been brought both by parties seeking the removal of statues and those contesting those removals. As the debate over the legacy of the Confederacy, its leaders, and its admirers intensifies, and with white supremacist rhetoric and violence once again becoming commonplace, disagreements over the future of Confederate monuments in public spaces are only going to become more frequent, testing the nature of local power and the role of local officials, as is increasing happening with preemption conflicts in many states.
Speaker: Richard Schragger