Virginia’s Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously affirmed the power of Gov. Ralph Northam to remove an imposing statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, a symbol that had become a target of demonstrators after the death of George Floyd last year.
Mr. Northam had announced his intention to have the 60-foot statue removed from Monument Avenue in June 2020, less than two weeks after Mr. Floyd’s death in police custody in Minneapolis.
Defenders of the 130-year-old monument challenged Mr. Northam in court, arguing that his order violated Virginia’s Constitution by encroaching on the legislature’s powers and that it defied agreements dating to the late 1880s that guaranteed the statue would remain in a public space.
One agreement, from 1890, required the Commonwealth of Virginia to “faithfully guard” the monument and “affectionately protect” it.
But the state Supreme Court, affirming a circuit court ruling, delivered two unanimous decisions in the governor’s favor on Thursday. Even if those agreements had created “restrictive covenants,” the justices wrote, they were “unenforceable” because their effect was “to compel government speech, by forcing the Commonwealth to express, in perpetuity, a message with which it now disagrees.”
Mr. Northam, a Democrat, welcomed the outcome.
“Today’s ruling is a tremendous win for the people of Virginia,” he said in a statement. “Our public memorials are symbols of who we are and what we value. When we honor leaders who fought to preserve a system that enslaved human beings, we are honoring a lost cause that has burdened Virginia for too many years.”
He added, “Today it is clear: The largest Confederate monument in the South is coming down.”
The court relied on the state’s expert witnesses to conclude that Virginia’s public policy has substantially changed since the 1890s on issues of race, citing major U.S. Supreme Court decisions that integrated the nation’s public schools and allowed interracial couples to marry, said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
Professor Tobias said that the plaintiffs could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court but that the high court was not likely to take the case because the matter centered on local law.
“The Lee statue is larger than life,” Professor Tobias said. “It took on symbolic significance and actual importance beyond just the statue. It was a symbol of the past that was detrimental to many people who lived in the city.”
A lawyer for the plaintiffs in the case, Patrick McSweeney, did not immediately return a phone message.
Virginia’s attorney general, Mark R. Herring, who argued the case on Mr. Northam’s behalf, defended the governor’s decision to remove the statue. Removing it, he said, will be an important step in making the state a more open, welcoming and fair place.
“For too long we allowed our communities to be dominated by symbols of white supremacy and hate that did not represent who we had become as Virginians,” Mr. Herring said in a statement. “The Lee statue has stood as a daily reminder of a racist past, but we cannot let that history define the Virginia of today and the Virginia of tomorrow.”
In the weeks after Mr. Floyd’s death in May 2020, nationwide protests opposing systemic racism and police violence against Black people focused attention on monuments to the Confederacy and historical figures linked to slavery. Demonstrators pulled down some monuments. Local lawmakers ordered the removal of others.
In June 2020, for example, protesters in Richmond toppled a statue of Jefferson Davis on Monument Avenue. A month later, the city of Richmond removed three statues of Confederate figures along the avenue. Also that July, legislative leaders ordered the removal of “a life-sized statue of Lee and seven busts depicting other ex-Confederates” from the State Capitol.
Lawrence West, a Black Lives Matter organizer in Richmond, started protesting at the Lee statue within days of Mr. Floyd’s death. On Thursday, he and other activists were jubilant.
“It’s a day of victory,” he said, standing by the monument with fellow activists and reporters. “We won.”
The battle against systemic racism is far from over, Mr. West said, acknowledging that many people — who say their heritage is being erased — were disappointed by the rulings on Thursday. He wasn’t sympathetic.
“Your forebears brought us over here so that we couldn’t figure out what our heritage is,” he said. “How about you help me figure out my heritage before I have to respect yours?”
On Thursday, officials said the rulings allowed Virginia’s Department of General Services to begin executing a plan to remove the statue.
“This process is complicated by several logistical and security concerns, including street closures and the equipment required to ensure the safe removal of the 12-ton statue,” a statement from Mr. Northam’s office said. “Ultimately removal of the statue will be a multi-day process; while crews are moving quickly, no action on the statue is expected this week.”
