TRI In The News
Sons of Confederate Veterans Sue Lexington Over Flag Ordinance
From The Roanoke Times
Original article available here
The Sons of Confederate Veterans today filed a federal lawsuit in Roanoke challenging amendments by the city of Lexington to a flags and banners ordinance that effectively prohibit the flying of flags of the Confederacy from standards on public light poles in the city.
Flanked by two lawyers, Brandon Dorsey, commander of Camp 1296 of the Stonewall Brigade of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, talked about the lawsuit during an afternoon news conference held on the steps of the Poff Federal Building in downtown Roanoke.
Dorsey said the ordinance amendments were clearly drafted to target the Confederate flag and “silence what we’re doing.”
He has previously described the Sons of Confederate Veterans as a history group with members who are descendants of men who “bled and died for this state, at its request, and ought to be remembered and honored.”
The lawsuit charges that the ordinance violates the organization’s First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights and is in violation of a 1993 federal court order.
As amended in September, the Lexington ordinance on flags specifies: "Only the following flags may be flown on the flag standards affixed to light poles in the city and no others:" — the United States flag, the Virginia flag and the flag of the city of Lexington.
The ordinance does not prohibit people from carrying the Confederate or other flags or displaying them from private property — a reality cited by many people who supported the amended ordinance’s adoption.
But it does effectively ban the display of flags of the Confederacy and others that have previously flown from city light poles — including flags of the Virginia Military Institute and of Washington and Lee University.
Larry Mann, Lexington city attorney, said today he had not yet seen a copy of the lawsuit.
“Without seeing the actual pleading anything I might say would be premature and based only on assumptions,” Mann said in an email.
The city and the organization have sparred before in federal court about the display of Confederate flags in public places in Lexington. A 1993 federal court order held that the city could not deny the right of the Sons of Confederate Veterans or its members “to wear, carry, display or show” the flags of the Confederacy “at any government sponsored or government-controlled place or event which is to any extent give over to private expressive activity.”
On Sept. 1, after a frequently contentious public hearing that stretched nearly three hours, the city council voted 4-1 to adopt the disputed ordinance amendments. The Sons of Confederate Veterans vowed then to challenge the ordinance in court.
The press conference came on the eve of the annual Lee-Jackson Day state holiday that honors Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Last year, the Sons of Confederate Veterans flew flags of the Confederacy from public light poles in the days preceding the holiday but had wanted to fly them through the holiday and the organization’s annual Saturday parade — a display the city did not allow.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans is being represented by lawyers Correy Diviney and Tom Strelka of the Roanoke firm of Strickland, Diviney and Strelka as well as the Rutherford Institute in Charlottesville.
