Bill to protect Confederate monuments narrowly fails in Georgia House

By a whisper-thin margin, the Republican-controlled Georgia House on Tuesday turned back a bill that would have allowed anyone to sue over the removal of Confederate monuments.

Longtime House Regulated Industries Chairman Alan Powell, R-Hartwell, pushed the idea on the second-to-last day of the legislative session, when many bills sneak through in the rush toward adjournment. Powell said the bill would apply to all monuments, although in recent years only monuments to Confederate and segregationist leaders have been under attack.

“We need to be more concerned about the slavery that exists today than the slavery that existed 160-70 years ago,” Powell said.

Democrats said the bill’s true intentions were to specifically protect Confederate monuments.

“This bill affords more rights to concrete people than real people,” said state said Rep. Scott Holcomb, D-Atlanta.

State Rep. Debra Bazemore, D-South Fulton, said the bill would restrict local governments from managing property in their control.

“Decisions that were once made thoughtfully by local leaders now risk being delayed, contested or blocked entirely,” Bazemore said.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups have challenged the removal of statues and Confederate flags and even a proposed museum exhibit. The measure would have ensured those groups could move forward with such lawsuits.

The bill would have given anyone legal standing to sue claiming the improper removal or displacement of Confederate monuments on public property.

It would also require government agencies seeking to remove or relocate a monument to give 90 days’ notice. During such a period an interested third party could petition to obtain the monument for public display.

Republican lawmakers in Georgia have a history of advancing proposals that protect Confederate monuments in the state. In 2019, Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law a measure that makes it more difficult to relocate Confederate monuments.

The vast majority of Confederate monuments were erected in the South decades after the Civil War as Southern states enacted Jim Crow laws rolling back rights extended to Black citizens during Reconstruction. While there was contemporary resistance to the erection of the monuments, dozens of statues and displays of the Confederate battle flag were removed in the years following the 2015 massacre in a Charleston, South Carolina, church by a white supremacist.