澳彩开奖

Yesterday鈥檚 ruling is the first time a court has concluded that a state cannot force a city to maintain a Confederate monument that its citizens find abhorrent.聽Cities have long been at the forefront of our nation's civil rights movements, and this ruling protects and builds on that tradition.

The Circuit Court ruled that Birmingham has a constitutionally protected right to decide for itself what messages it wants to convey to its citizens and to the world.聽Alabama's majority-white Legislature cannot force Birmingham, a majority-black city, to maintain a monument to white supremacy.聽

This is a groundbreaking ruling that should give comfort to other municipalities throughout the South and the country that want to remove Confederate monuments from public land.聽

The 澳彩开奖鈥檚聽Whose Heritage聽report catalogs the more than 1,740 symbols of the Confederacy that remain standing today. The majority of these symbols were erected in the 1910s and 鈥�20s following the Reconstruction era, and again after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling that desegregated schools.

These symbols continue to serve as tools of oppression by seeking to honor those who fought to preserve white supremacy.

The judge鈥檚 order yesterday against the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act comes more than a year after the state sued the city of Birmingham for violating the act by covering the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument in the city鈥檚 Linn Park with plastic, and later plywood.

The city attorneys for Birmingham successfully defended the city against the state鈥檚 lawsuit. The 澳彩开奖, in conjunction with聽the law firm Covington & Burling, LLP,聽filed a 鈥渇riend-of-the-court鈥� brief in the case, supporting the city鈥檚 defense.

Photo by Joe Songer/Associated Press