AL Supreme Court sides with state over B’ham Confederate monument
Published 6:25 pm Friday, February 15, 2019
- An unidentified man walks past a Confederate monument in a park in downtown Birmingham, Ala., on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2019. A judge has voided a state law passed to protect monuments including the memorial, which is surrounded by a wooden box erected by the city to block passers by from seeing inscriptions that honor Confederates.
MONTGOMERY (WBRC) – The Alabama Supreme Court has granted the State of Alabama’s motion to stay the recent Jefferson County Circuit Court’s judgment to declare the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017 to be unconstitutional.
Attorney General Steve Marshall announced the stay on Friday afternoon.
“I am pleased that the Alabama Supreme Court has granted the State’s motion to stay the Circuit Court’s ruling,” A.G. Marshall said in a statement. “We think that U.S. Supreme Court precedent clearly demonstrates that the Circuit Court erred in striking down the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act. Thus, we asked the Alabama Supreme Court to preserve the status quo regarding the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in Linn Park until the Court rules on our appeal.
“The Supreme Court’s stay allows the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act to remain in effect until the Supreme Court resolves this appeal over the Act’s constitutionality. We continue to hold that the Circuit Court erred when it ruled that the U.S. Constitution grants cities free speech rights that they can enforce against the State. For more than a century, the U.S. Supreme Court has held just the opposite, recognizing that ‘a political subdivision, created by the state for the better ordering of government, has no privileges or immunities under the federal constitution which it may invoke in opposition to the will of its creator.’ We look forward to presenting these arguments to the Alabama Supreme Court.”
