Judge: City Covering Confederate Monument Is Legal

BIRMINGHAM, AL - A storm of controversy surrounded the City of Birmingham's decision in the fall of 2017 to place a black wooden barrier around a Confederate monument in Birmingham's Linn Park. Defenders of the monument claimed the city violated the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act. A judge this week has ruled that Birmingham was within its rights to put up the shield around the monument.

Judge Michael Graffeo issued his order on Monday just before midnight, according to a report by Alabama Media Group. The order comes over a year after the state sued the city for violating the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act-a law to prohibit local governments from moving historical monuments on public property that have been in place for 40 years or more. The act also prohibits renaming buildings and streets with historical names that have been in place at least 40 years.

Graffeo ruled the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act doesn’t have any legal authority and the city of Birmingham doesn’t have to take down its wooden screen placed around a Confederate monument in Linn Park.

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"Just as the state could not force any particular citizen to post a pro-Confederacy sign in his or her front lawn, so too can the state not commandeer the city's property for the state's preferred message," Graffeo wrote in his ruling.

The law was passed in August of 2017, and in order to comply with the law, then-Birmingham mayor William Bell ordered the 52-foot-tall monument to be covered with wooden panels. Bell said the barrier was meant to be temporary until the fate of the statue was decided.

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office plans to appeal Graffeo's ruling. “The Attorney General’s Office stands by its original assessment that the Alabama Monument Preservation Act is constitutional. Therefore, we will be filing an appeal,” according to the AG’s statement issued Tuesday morning.

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