Lawsuit ends over Confederate monument outside North Carolina courthouse

GRAHAM, N.C. (AP) — A lawsuit challenging a central North Carolina county’s decision to keep in place its government-owned Confederate monument is over after civil rights groups and individuals who sued decided against asking the state Supreme Court to review lower court rulings.

The state Court of Appeals upheld in March a trial court’s decision to side with Alamance County and its commissioners over the 30-foot (9.1-meter) tall monument outside the historic Alamance County Courthouse. The state NAACP, the Alamance NAACP chapter, and other groups and individuals had sued in 2021 after the commissioners rejected calls to take it down.

The deadline to request a review by the state Supreme Court has passed, according to appellate rules. Following the March decision, the plaintiffs “recognized the low probability of this case proceeding to a full trial,” Marissa Wenzel, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Thursday while confirming no appeal would occur.

The monument, dedicated in 1914 and featuring a statue of a Confederate infantryman at the top, had been a focal point of local racial inequality protests during 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

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A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals panel agreed unanimously that the county had kept the statue at its longtime location in accordance with a 2015 state law that limits when an “object of remembrance” can be relocated.

Ernest Lewis Jr., an Alamance County NAACP leader, told WGHP-TV that his group is now encouraging people to vote to push for change.

“We have elected to focus our efforts instead on empowering our clients to advocate for change through grassroots political processes,” Wenzel said in a written statement Thursday.

Other lawsuits involving the fate of Confederate monuments in public spaces in the state, including in Tyrrell County and the city of Asheville, are pending.