The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday declined to reopen a challenge to Asheville city leaders’ decision to remove a downtown monument honoring the Civil War-era governor in 2021.
The state Supreme Court unanimously agreed that it was appropriate to dismiss a legal claim brought by a historic preservation group that helped raise funds to restore the 75-foot-tall Zebulon Vance Obelisk in the 2010s. did.
Months after the 2020 protests over racial justice and the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer began, the Asheville City Council voted to remove a downtown monument due to public safety concerns. It was approved.
Philadelphia police officer acquitted of assault charges nearly four years after using baton on Floyd protester
The monument was first dedicated in 1897, but it had been vandalized and the city had received threats that people would knock it down, according to the opinion piece.
The 26th North Carolina Military Historic Preservation Society filed a lawsuit against the removal, but the trial judge dismissed the lawsuit. The obelisk was taken down before an appeals court ordered the city and Buncombe County to halt demolition while the appeal was heard, but the monument’s foundation remains in place. Friday’s decision is likely to allow the base to be demolished.
In 2022, the Intermediate Court of Appeals upheld the removal of Superior Court Judge Alan Thornburgh. The three-judge panel unanimously ruled that the association entered into an agreement with the city on the restoration project, which raised more than $138,000, but that the agreement requires the city to maintain the obelisk in perpetuity. He said that he did not request that.
Exterior view of the North Carolina Supreme Court building in Raleigh, North Carolina. (North Carolina Supreme Court, official website)
Associate Justice Phil Berger Jr. wrote Friday’s opinion in favor of the appeals court’s ruling that the association’s breach of contract claims should be dismissed because the organization lacked legal standing to sue. I objected. But because the association was unable to justify its contractual claims to a judge, the matter was deemed abandoned, Berger added.
“Plaintiffs therefore fail to assert any basis to challenge the monument’s removal,” Berger wrote, granting Thornburgh’s dismissal of the association’s remaining claims.
A native of Vance County, Vance served as governor from 1862 to 1865 and from 1877 to 1879. He was also a Confederate soldier and a U.S. senator. The city, he announced, said the monument was located in a location where enslaved people were believed to have been sold.
The monument was one of many Confederate statues and memorials to be removed across the South in recent years, including one in Winston-Salem. A Civil War history group’s lawsuit over the monument’s removal also reached the state Supreme Court and was featured in the court brief in the Asheville case.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Separately, an appeals court panel this week upheld Alamance County commissioners’ decision not to remove a Confederate monument outside Alamance County’s historic district courthouse.
