Latest Attempt To Ban Removal Of Historic Monuments Passes FL House Committee

By Mitch Perry and Liv Caputo, Florida Phoenix

February 17, 2026

During the past 11 years, more than 30 Confederate monuments have been removed by local Florida governments after their communities demanded that they do so.

The Florida Legislature also got in the act, voting in 2016 to remove a statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith that represented Florida in the U.S. Capitol and ultimately replacing it with a statue of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune.

However, in recent years, Florida Republicans have attempted to ensure that such removals never happen again.

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee approved a proposal (HB 455) sponsored by Jacksonville Republican Rep. Dean Black that would ban local governments from enacting or enforcing any local ordinance, regulation, or rule removing, damaging, or destroying a historic Florida monument or memorial. If a local government official or officials violate that ban, a court would assess a civil fine of up to $1,000 against those officials.

The proposal received strong pushback by Democrats on the committee, particularly Black lawmakers.

Rep. Bruce Antone, D-Orlando, said he believes in preserving history, but not when it comes to Confederate monuments, which he said was not a “wholesome purpose.”

“[It] was not a purpose to actually acknowledge the greatness of somebody,” he said. “It was really erected to be a veiled threat to colored people and negroes.”

“Having grown up in the United States my whole life, I thought we were about patriotism,” said Rep. Michele Rayner, D-St. Petersburg. “I thought that we were about making sure that we’re Americans and anyone that would actually try to be seditious against the United States, I don’t know why we would honor them.”

But Rep. Michelle Salzman, a Republican from Escambia County, spoke up for the legislation, saying that “a nation without memory is a nation without direction.”

“These historical displays represents the values and struggles of that particular time,” she said. “But context matters. So, there were literally documentation of those times, both good and bad, but we don’t have to tear down history to tell the truth about it.”

Several members of the public raised strong objections.

Robin Taub Williams, a retired teacher who is Jewish, said she thanked God that statues of Adolph Hitler aren’t displayed in Germany.

“In our country, we have people who fought for slavery and their monuments are still around,” she said. “Just as Hitler, if I saw his image, it would be mortifying to me. I am sure that a huge number of people in our nation who are Black find it really offensive to have to look at it. It bothers me and I’m a white person. I would say, I’m opposed to this; if people are bad, get rid of their monuments.”

Wells Todd, an activist from Jacksonville, has made the trip to Tallahassee over the past several years to oppose similar bills pushed by Republicans in the Legislature.

“This bill specifically leaves out Confederate statutes, but that’s what they’re protecting,” he said. “I’m from Jacksonville. It took us eight years to get the statue down there. And we changed the names of schools. That’s why they keep pushing these bills.”

Isabella Rodriguez, with the group Citizens Defending Freedom, supported the bill.

“My family escaped communism,,” she said. “One of the first signs of a regime change is the destruction of monuments. I made a simple comment and then I was approached in the elevator and I was called a racist for holding that position. And that’s the problem. History isn’t a racial problem.”

Similar proposals have been introduced in the past three legislative sessions but none has made it to the governor’s desk. Notably, during a heated discussion of the bill during the 2024 session, Senate Democrats left that committee meeting in disgust. The bill passed the committee but the full Senate never took it up.

In making his closing case for the proposal, Rep. Black said that his bill isn’t designed to save any Confederate monuments, because that’s already taken place over the past decade.

“They’ve already torn those down, and this bill doesn’t put any of those back up,” he said.

Instead, Black said that the “crosshairs” were now on statues of Christopher Columbus and the “Kissing statute in Sarasota” (officially called “Unconditional Surrender,” which Sarasota County commissioners moved to a different location in 2020; it’s modeled on the historical photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square on V.E. Day).

If lawmakers don’t respond now, “they’ll come for the Holocaust Memorials next. They’ll come in the name of #Metoo or some later iteration of that, for statutes of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., because they’ll say that he didn’t treat women all that well.”

The bill passed strictly along party lines, with all five Democrats on the committee opposing it. The proposal has one more committee stop before reaching the House floor. Its Senate companion (SB 496) has yet, however, to be heard in any of its three committees, meaning the chances the bill becomes law this session remain tentative at best.

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