Latest effort to stop removal of statues denied
8th February 2016 · 0 Comments
On Friday, a Civil District Court judge denied a request for a preliminary injunction blocking the removal of the Battle of Liberty Place monument and three statues honoring Confederate leaders in New Orleans.
Judge Piper Griffin denied the injunction sought by the Monumental Task Committee to block the removal of three monuments — Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, and P.G.T. Beauregard — that the City of New Orleans is seeking. A fourth monument, the Liberty Place monument, is federally protected. The denial of the injunction by Judge Griffin clears the way for the city to begin the removal of the monuments, although attorneys for MTC said they plan to file an appeal in the case.
WWL News reported that Pierre McGraw, president of the Monumental Task Committee, was upbeat after the ruling by the judge. “We still feel like our case has lots of merit, and we’re going to continue to pursue this to save our beautiful monuments in the city,” he told WWL. “We feel like we got the majority of New Orleanians behind this.”
McGraw asserted in his suit in state court that he has a legal stake in the fate of three of the monuments due to 26 years and money he had invested for cleaning and protecting them.
Griffin did not agree and said because the monuments are public property, McGraw does not have a legal stake.
The ruling is the last setback for those trying to stop the removal of the four monuments. First, they tried their case in federal court, but U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier tossed the case in January leaving the state courts as the last avenue.
After a Baton Rouge-based company backed out of the project to remove the four statues from public spaces in New Orleans, the City of New Orleans indicated that it will now accept public bids for the removal of the statues, which some residents and elected officials have said are racially offensive and not representative of the city’s divergent culture. However, a city official said that the project will still be paid for with funds from a private donation.
After several months of heated debate owner whether the City should remove the statues from public spaces, the New Orleans City Council voted in December to relocate them to still-undetermined locations. But hours after the vote, a lawsuit was filed by four groups seeking to block the removal of the statues. During a hearing on Jan. 14 both sides in the argument presented their cases to U.S. Judge Carl Barbier, who ruled late last month that the City of New Orleans could move forward with plans to relocate the statues.
A day after Barbier issued his ruling, the president of the Monumental Task Committee, one of the four groups that challenged the City’s plans to remove the statues, filed another challenge in state court.
That led to the Friday, Feb. 5, hearing in Civil District Court.
It was disclosed during the Jan. 14 hearing that H&O Investments of Baton Rouge decided to back away from the project after the company’s owner and his wife received death threats at their residence and a number of the company’s clients threatened to cancel their contracts with the company if they proceeded with the statue-removal project.
Just days after the company pulled out of the project, the company owner’s Lamborghini was set aflame in Baton Rouge, although officials had found no evidence to connect the fire to the statue-removal project.
The New Orleans Advocate reported that at a council meeting Tuesday, Cedric Grant, a top city adviser to Mayor Mitch Landrieu, assured council members that the cost of removing the statues would not be passed on to taxpayers.
WWL reported last week that opponents of the removal are now concerned that some tax dollars could be used for the removal and they say they are concerned that with firms shying away from handling the job, the monuments could be damaged if a highly-regarded company doesn’t handle the move.
This article originally published in the February 8, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
