Chatham County
Judge rules on UDC claim that Chatham County violated state Confederate statue law
A judge dismissed a lawsuit Monday filed against Chatham County over the removal of a Confederate monument outside its historic courthouse.
Guilford County Superior Court Judge Susan Bray listened to nearly two hours of testimony before ruling that the Winnie Davis Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy lacked the standing to challenge the county’s decision. Bray said the UDC’s attorney also failed to prove his clients suffered any harm from the statue’s removal.
Chatham Commissioner Karen Howard, who sat with other commissioners during the hearing, said there’s still hope for a conversation with the UDC about the statue’s future.
“It was good to have our decision validated,” she said. “We’ve always felt that we were on the side of right, but I’m sure it’s just a sense of relief for the board members, and we’re hoping to move forward.”
The county has maintained that the 1907 license that allowed the UDC to erect the monument can be revoked. The license does not say whether the monument is a gift but leaves it “in the care and keeping of the said Daughters of the Confederacy.”
However, James Davis, a Forsyth County attorney representing the UDC chapter and three Chatham County residents — chapter President Barbara Pugh, Gene Brooks and Thomas Clegg — argued the statue was a gift to the county.
If the monument were determined to be a gift, that would make it a public monument protected under a 2015 state law that limits the circumstances under which a public monument can be removed.
Attorney Nick Ellis, representing the county, mounted a multi-part defense Monday, arguing primarily that the UDC chapter did not have standing to sue the county, because in business filings with the state, it claimed to be a subsidiary of the North Carolina Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and not an independent entity.
When Davis argued that the UDC amended its business filing Nov. 26 to clear up the mistake, Ellis objected. He noted the amendment was filed two weeks after sworn testimony about that fact was presented to the court, and that he only received a copy at Monday’s hearing, Ellis said.
“Now they’re trying to circumvent (the previous evidence), saying the plaintiff (Pugh) didn’t know what she was doing,” Ellis said.
When Bray did not consider the filing, Davis then argued that the county was trying to bully a group of mainly older women into removing the statue. When they didn’t comply, he said, the commissioners spent taxpayer money pursuing a personal objective.
That argument failed to acknowledge, however, that Chatham County residents petitioned the commissioners in April to remove the monument, and many more have come to speak at public hearings about the issue.
The UDC lawsuit was filed on behalf of residents unhappy with the county’s actions, said attorney Mark Dorosin, representing the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The group was a party to the county’s defense on behalf of the West Chatham Branch of the NAACP and Chatham for All.
“But because (the UDC and plaintiffs) have no injury — in fact, they have no legally protected interest at all — the claims of individual (injuries) must be dismissed,” Dorosin said. “To do otherwise, would allow any resident unhappy with the decision of the local government to come in to court and challenge that decision.”
Injunction lifted
The Chatham County commissioners voted in August to give the UDC until Oct. 1 to come up with a plan for the statue. In its resolution, the board said the monument and its base would be considered public trespass if the UDC didn’t move it by Nov. 1.
Pugh asked the county for more time in September but was rebuffed. The UDC filed for a preliminary injunction in late October to stop the county from removing the statue.
Bray lifted that injunction at a Nov. 13 hearing, saying the UDC’s attorneys failed to prove there would be “irreparable harm” if the monument were removed. The county placed the statue into storage on Nov. 19 and is paying $300 a month to keep it in a Greensboro warehouse.
The court hearing follows a separate court decision last month that awarded the Silent Sam Confederate statue to the North Carolina Division Sons of Confederate Veterans. The statue, which stood on UNC’s campus for 105 years, was toppled in August 2018 during an anti-racist protest.
The UNC System has agreed to set up a $2.5 million charitable trust to move Silent Sam to a new location and help build a facility to house and display the monument in a county that is not home to one of the UNC System schools and universities.
The UDC has not decided whether to appeal the judge’s ruling, Davis said after Monday’s hearing. However, the protests that were sparked by the commissioners’ decision are likely to continue.
Local and out-of-state statue supporters and opponents have descended on Pittsboro every Saturday since the board’s decision. Confederate flags also have been raised just outside of town and in front of Horton Middle School, a formerly all-black school named for local slave and poet George Moses Horton.
The protests have continued since the statue’s removal, pushing the county’s cost to provide security for the statue and at the protests to over $100,000. At least a dozen people have been arrested.
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