Republican lawmakers have spent the last decade working to pass laws that will cement the existence of Confederate statues in their states — literally.
Since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, over 200 Confederate memorials have been taken down, but GOP members have found ways to make statues of U.S. history permanent. The Southern Poverty Law Center determined that, as of February 2022, there are 723 monuments, 741 roadways, and 201 schools honoring Confederates.
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Liberal activists say the monuments misrepresent history, while conservative lawmakers argue that the memorials are a part of U.S. history and should be preserved.
The vast majority of memorials are located in former Confederate states, as well as Washington, D.C., and border states. Since 2013, over 100 monument protection bills have been introduced across 21 states, according to a USA Today analysis.
Where have protection laws been established?
Six states, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee, have enacted preservation laws to block the removal of Confederate memorials in the last 10 years.
Most of these preservation laws either propose harsh financial penalties or criminal charges against municipalities. Others create complicated approval systems that let the state leaders, not towns or cities, determine the fate of Confederate monuments.
Data show that 74 of the 113 bills passed ban monument alteration entirely. Fifty of the 113 laws passed punish local governments by withholding state funding or fining local officials, and 23 laws make monument removal a misdemeanor or a felony.
Tennessee's law, the Heritage Protection Act of 2013, serves as a model for other GOP states looking to create monument protection laws. It prohibits the removal of monuments on public property but grants the Tennessee Monuments and Memorials Commission, a nine-member board, with the power to make exceptions.
A bill currently being considered in Nashville is looking to impose a fine of $10,000 a day on public officials who participate in the removal or renaming of a monument or building.
In Arkansas, GOP lawmakers blocked the city of Fort Smith from removing a life-size statue of a Confederate soldier by passing a law in 2021. The city administrator had considered removing the monument in the years since Floyd's death, and residents petitioned the city to take it down.
In West Virginia, Republicans have introduced over a dozen bills since 2016. The state has nine Confederate memorials, compared to the over 100 statues present in neighboring Virginia.
Democratic groups and legislatures standing way of GOP bills
Several liberal groups decry Republicans' laws as an effort to remove power from blue cities in red states.
“It's happening all across the country in states with a Republican-controlled legislature,” Abe Rubert-Schewel, who is representing the NAACP in a North Carolina monument case, said to USA Today. “They are passing laws to control what the urban centers, which are Democratically controlled, can do.”
Only states with Republican-led legislatures have passed monument protection laws, and it appears that trend will continue, despite GOP lawmakers in blue states hoping to achieve similar outcomes.
Earlier this year, New York Republicans introduced the Veterans' Memorials Protection Act, which could protect monuments constructed to honor veterans of any U.S. conflict or war. However, the Democratic-controlled New York Assembly killed similar introductions of the act in 2013 and 2015, so it is likely the recent bill will die.
A similar bill has repeatedly been introduced in Pennsylvania after Democratic lawmakers called for the removal of the statues in the wake of civil rights protests. The most recent bill currently sits in the state Senate Judiciary Committee, where similar bills have died.
Both sides work to circumvent the law
Some states, like Louisiana, Georgia, and Virginia, specifically mention Confederate monuments. Others use subtle wording like "the War Between States," and some just prevent the removal of any "historically significant" memorials or monuments "more than 40 years old."
In Oklahoma, state House Republicans attempted to remove wording that limited protection to monuments after World War I. The revised bill would also have protected memorials from the Civil War, 40 years before Oklahoma became a state. However, the bill did not pass.
On the other side, some Democratic-controlled cities have worked to circumvent a ban on altering statues. Cities like Memphis, Tennessee, have sold monuments to nonprofit groups or added signs to add context to the statue's historical significance.
Other blue cities have openly defied their Republican-led legislatures, with one mayor in North Carolina livestreaming the demolition of a Confederate memorial in August 2022.
What Confederate memorial removals are being discussed?
In September, a panel recommended the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery be removed for being "problematic from top to bottom.”
The cemetery announced on Tuesday that it is preparing for the removal of the memorial following a Congressional mandate. Beginning Aug. 4, the Army filed a notice of intent to initiate a 30-day scoping period and receive comments about the potential environmental effects associated with the mandate.
Richmond, Virginia, made national headlines after completing the removal of all public Confederate statues in December 2022. The removal of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, one of the nation's largest Confederate monuments, occurred during Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's tenure. It had faced several lawsuits from Richmond residents, but the removal of the statue was upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court.
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A public hearing will be held on Aug. 23 as requested by the Army. People will seek alternatives that could avoid, minimize, or mitigate any adverse effects from the memorial's removal.
On Monday, the North Carolina Court of Appeals rejected a lawsuit that challenged the town of Louisburg's decision to move its Confederate monument from the center of Main Street to a nearby cemetery. The court ordered that the plaintiffs, who said the town violated state law, did not have an ownership stake in the monument.