A Newton County woman’s lawsuit against her county’s planned removal of a Confederate monument in downtown Covington can go forward, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
But the high court dismissed lawsuits filed by Sons of Confederate Veterans groups against both Henry and Newton counties over the removal of Confederate monuments. The veterans groups and Newton resident T. Davis Humphries had filed suits against the two counties, citing a state law that makes it unlawful for local governments to remove, relocate, conceal or alter historical monuments that honor the service of Confederate soldiers.
The 65-page decision, written by Justice Nels Peterson, said the distinction lies in ties to the community.
“(W)hen a local government owes a legal duty to community stakeholders, the violation of that legal duty constitutes an injury that our case law has recognized as conferring standing to those stakeholders,” the ruling said. “Because the Sons of Confederate Veterans groups have not alleged anything resembling community stakeholder status and have alleged no other cognizable injury, they do not have standing.”
The Henry and Newton statues were built about 50 years after the end of the Civil War, during a period when many Confederate monuments were erected across the South. The push coincided with Jim Crow laws and the release of the film “The Birth of a Nation,” which helped fuel the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan atop nearby Stone Mountain.
The Henry board of commissioners voted in July 2020 to remove the Confederate monument from its courthouse square in McDonough. A week later, Newton’s board of commissioners voted to remove a Confederate monument in Covington.
In his opinion, Peterson made note of the strong opinions on both sides of the issue.
“This case is about a highly controversial subject: whether local communities must continue displaying (and maintaining at public expense) monuments that celebrate the Confederacy and its long-dead supporters, despite those communities finding such celebration repugnant,” he wrote. “But nothing about those monuments is at issue in this appeal.”
The threshold question, Peterson wrote, is whether the state Constitution requires plaintiffs to show they will suffer a clearly identifiable injury in order to have standing to file suits in Georgia’s courts. The answer is the Constitution does allow it, and Humphries, as a Newton resident, made such a showing, the decision said.
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