NC Supreme Court issues ruling in dispute over removal of Confederate statue

The N.C. Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday on a longstanding dispute over the 2019 decision by Winston-Salem officials to remove a more than century-old Confederate statute near the old Forsyth County courthouse.

The city removed the statue citing public safety concerns after it was vandalized on multiple occasions, beginning with protests that followed the 2017 “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. A pro-Confederate group, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, challenged the statue’s removal, arguing that it violated the group’s due process rights.

City officials asked a Forsyth County Superior Court judge to reject the group’s challenge, on the grounds that the group lacked legal standing to object to the city’s decision to move the statue. In May 2019, the judge ruled in favor of the city, finding that the Confederate group had failed to show it had standing to challenge the statue’s removal, and dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning that the group wouldn’t be able to refile its complaint in the same court again. The following year, a divided panel of N.C. Court of Appeals judges upheld the lower court’s ruling.

After hearing oral arguments in the case in August, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that United Daughters of the Confederacy had failed through multiple kinds of legal arguments to demonstrate standing in the case. At the same time, the high court said the trial court in Forsyth County shouldn’t have dismissed the case with prejudice.

Justices reject UDC’s claims of standing

Friday’s ruling was unanimous, although three of the court’s Republican justices, including Chief Justice Paul Newby, decided to write their own concurring opinion instead of signing onto the majority opinion, which was written by Justice Sam Ervin IV, a Democrat.

Due to the Supreme Court’s finding that the case shouldn’t have originally been dismissed with prejudice, the court said it was sending the case back to the trial court with instructions to dismiss it without prejudice, potentially leaving the door open for the Confederate group to bring forward its challenge again.

On behalf of the majority, Ervin wrote that the trial court had “correctly concluded” that the Confederate group had failed to show infringement of a “legally enforceable right” that would be sufficient to establish the group’s standing to challenge the statue’s removal.

“We hold that the trial court did not err by dismissing the amended complaint for lack of standing,” the opinion states. “On the other hand, we further hold that the trial court erred by dismissing the amended complaint with, rather than without, prejudice.”

The court’s Republican justices, in their concurring opinion, also write that the Confederate group failed to establish standing, and specifically cited the group’s failure to identify its members or say if any of them lived in Winston-Salem or Forsyth County.

“Without more information regarding the membership of the organization and where its members reside, plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that its organization or its members have any interest in the monument that is the subject of this case,” the concurring opinion states.

Will the case be refiled?

In a statement, Angela Carmon, the attorney for the city of Winston-Salem, said city officials were pleased with the Supreme Court’s opinion.

“The Court concluded that the United Daughters lacked standing to bring a legal action on every theory they offered,” Carmon said. “We are all hopeful that this important ruling will conclude several years of contentious litigation.”

James Davis, the attorney representing the United Daughters of the Confederacy, noted that since the Supreme Court ordered the trial court to dismiss the case without prejudice, the group could refile the case in Forsyth County Superior Court if it wanted to.

Davis said he would speak with his client and recommend that they refile the case “and cure our pleading issue, so that the court could not dismiss this matter as a matter of standing.”

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