Posted on 07/23/2019 12:02:37 PM PDT by csvset
NORFOLK
A Circuit Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit by activists that attempted to force the city to move its 112-year-old Confederate monument.
In an 11-page order entered Tuesday, Chief Judge Mary Jane Hall said the plaintiffs failed to prove that their constitutional rights were being violated by the continued placement of the Confederate monument.
The suit was filed in late March by Roy Perry-Bey, from Newport News, and Ronald Green, who lives in Norfolk. The men represented themselves.
They argued that the display of the monument endorsed ideas such as secession, slavery, racial segregation, white supremacy and violence and that it thus represented a danger to them personally. Perry-Bey and Green are black.
The monument to Confederate war dead, topped with a bronze statue of a Confederate soldier nicknamed “Johnny Reb,” has sat on the southeast corner of Commercial Place and East Main Street since it was completed in 1907. It is a product of a time when public sentiment in the South surrounding the Civil War was moving to lionize the Confederacy — the so-called “Lost Cause” ideology. In many cases, these kinds of monuments were meant to continue to assert white supremacy.
Perry-Bey and Green argued in court filings that the statue was infringing upon their rights, invoking the First and Fourteenth amendments.
They sought to have the 80-foot-monument moved to Elmwood Cemetery, as the City Council had promised in a resolution passed in August 2017.
But Judge Hall found that Perry-Bey and Green hadn’t proven that their constitutional rights had been violated.
“As offended as Plaintiffs undoubtedly are by this prominent reminder of a long history of racial oppression," the First Amendment restricts government regulation of private speech and does not restrict the government's own speech, Hall wrote in her order.
Any legal right to freedom from an unwelcome message from the government, Hall wrote, comes "not by a lawsuit but by the political process and the ballot box."
She also noted that she saw no evidence that Perry-Bey or Green had been deprived of life, liberty or property, as promised in the Fourteenth Amendment.
With a lack of convincing evidence for these and other claims, Hall agreed to throw out the suit as requested by the City of Norfolk. The judge also cited a lack of standing from the Plaintiffs and the fact that none of the named defendants — the city, council members and Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring — had personally participated in denying their constitutional rights.
Perry-Bey was as defiant Tuesday as he had been in the courtroom, where he occasionally sparred with Hall.
“We feel that her ruling is improper,” Perry-Bey said, though he noted he hadn’t yet seen the actual order. He said he planned to appeal the decision to the Virginia Supreme Court and called Hall’s actions unethical.
Perry-Bey had argued that there were continued issues of judicial ethics, on the part of the city’s attorneys and Hall.
Norfolk City Council’s 2017 resolution to move the monument was passed in the midst of demonstrations against Confederate monuments in Norfolk and elsewhere in the wake of the Chalottesville Unite the Right rally, which drew thousands and ended in the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer.
The resolution included a caveat saying the city would only move the monument once state law clearly permitted it.
In recent years, judges have issued conflicting interpretations of the law, which makes it illegal to move war monuments, including those dedicated to the Confederacy. A challenge that originated in Charlottesville has been stuck in the courts, and the state Supreme Court has declined to weigh in.
After Perry-Bey and Green had filed their lawsuit, Norfolk City Attorney Bernard Pishko said in April that the city would challenge the state law.
Pishko said at the time the city would argue that the laws preventing the movement of war monuments were infringing on the city’s First and Fifth Amendment rights.
However, the city has yet to file anything related to that challenge.
On Tuesday, Deputy City Attorney Adam Melita said that “with this matter resolved, we can now turn full attention to finishing the drafting on the City-initiated case."
Make the losers pay court costs.
People in VA never seem to tire of attacking their heritage.
“Activists” never quit. Conservatives need to stop being “passivists.”
“…represented a danger to them personally” — Is it going to topple over on them?
Sounds like da judge be needing some re-edumacation.
Talk about a flimsy case ...
F you Perry-Bey.
“People in VA never seem to tire of attacking their heritage.”
The “people” are foreign (eg NY, NJ,MA etc) interlopers into Virginia.
I understand Democrats are threatening to boycott the 400th anniversary of Jamestown.
The only thing remotely worse than a hyphenated-named woman is a hyphenated-named MAN! Just sayin’!!
Personally, I truly hope that NO hateful/prejudiced DIMocRATS attend.
Yours, TMN78247
According to Circuit Court records, Perry-Bey was convicted in 1987 of threatening to blow up Norfolk police headquarters. He later was convicted of aggravated sexual battery of a juvenile. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
From a story back in ‘08
Suit claims system to elect Norfolk's mayor is discriminatory
Unless I miss my guess, the hyphenated name “-Bey” refers to a black muslim sect. This may be a strictly southeastern VA thing. Somebody please correct me if I’m wrong.
I understand Democrats are threatening to boycott the 400th anniversary of Jamestown.
No Democrats sounds nice!! That should make the celebration a great one!
Got off my butt and did some research....this from the WWW:
” So now when you see -Bey or -El titles added to the last name, it is merely so-called black people returning to the ways of their ancestor’s true identity of being Moorish, and also returning to their divine creed of Islam. They did not give up the last names that their ancestors took on, because they carry that to always be linked to their ancestors and as a reminder of the brutality of their captivity and the stripping their nation of people, reducing them to sub-human status. The annexing of Bey or El brings them back into the families of nations. Those people who change their name when they return to Islam are taking on an Arabic name, yet that is not a prerequisite to practicing Islam.”
Oh, I know, I actually had that line of BS bolded the first time I posted the story, (mods yanked it). I need to e-mail the “reporter” and ask for example of White supremacy Civil War Monuments.
In MD we habitually obliterate it outright.
To save the feeeeelllings of demographics and their limo-lib enablers.
It ticks me off how this AUTHOR states that these monuments often WERE an assertion of “white supremacy”.
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