A North Carolina appeals court ruled Tuesday that local leaders who refused calls to remove a Confederate monument from outside a county courthouse acted in a constitutional manner and kept in place the statue at its longtime location in accordance with state law.
The three-judge panel unanimously upheld a trial court judge’s decision to side with Alamance County and its commissioners over the 30 foot (9.1 meter)-tall statue, which features a Confederate infantryman perched at the top. The state NAACP, the Alamance NAACP chapter, and other groups and individuals had sued the county and its leaders in 2021 after the commissioners rejected calls to take the statue down.
Confederate monuments in North Carolina, as elsewhere nationwide, were a frequent focal point for racial inequality protests in the late 2010s, and particularly in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. North Carolina legislators enacted a law in 2015 that limits when an “object of remembrance” such as a military monument can be relocated.
Let’s not forget here, that your example of ATL and Stone Mountain… is private land and not government land, courthouse grounds. The ATL and GA governments have nothing to do with it, and if they did or attempted to we’d have another issue regarding the rights of the land owners and board that runs the park there.
I’m all about exercising equal religious representation of courthouse or government land, and tearing down statues commemorating traitors or slave owners, again on government land, but government overreach is a thing I also don’t want to support too much.
Edit: it has been brought to my attention that I misremembered, it’s privately operated and managed, but state owned.