A state judge on Wednesday threw out a controversial settlement in which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill would have given the Confederate statue known as Silent Sam to the Sons of Confederate Veterans and paid the group $2.5 million for the monument’s upkeep.
The original Silent Sam deal — between the University of North Carolina system, its Board of Governors, and the Sons of Confederate Veterans, announced in November — sparked protests at Chapel Hill, especially after the publication of documents suggesting that the board didn’t have to offer the statue to the Confederate group on such generous terms.
In addition, legal scholars argued that the group never had standing to sue for possession of Silent Sam in the first place. A leaked email from Kevin Stone, a Sons leader, seemed to confirm the notion: After the deal was announced, Stone celebrated obtaining Silent Sam, at the university’s expense, after bringing a lawsuit the Sons had “zero chance of winning.”
In his ruling on Wednesday, Judge Allen Baddour of the Superior Court in Orange County, N.C., said the Sons of Confederate Veterans lacked standing to negotiate the future of Silent Sam with the University of North Carolina system. He told Ripley Rand, a lawyer representing the Board of Governors, that the university system had until Monday to tell the court what it wished to do with the monument. At that time, Baddour said, he would announce the next steps in the process.
Baddour previously approved the settlement, but he reconsidered after Chapel Hill students and faculty members filed a legal challenge, WRAL reported.
“While this was not the result we had hoped for, we respect the court’s ruling in this case,” Rand said in a statement emailed to The Chronicle. The board “will go back to work to find a lasting and lawful solution to the dispute over the monument.”
While this was not the result we had hoped for, we respect the court’s ruling.
Before the Board of Governors decided to hand Silent Sam to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, students and faculty members had lobbied and protested for the statue’s removal from the campus, arguing that it created a racially hostile environment. Meanwhile, administrators worried it would attract deadly protests. In August 2018, activists toppled the statue, which shows an armed Confederate soldier and had been placed on its pedestal in 1913 under the auspices of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Also at Wednesday’s hearing, Baddour revealed that the Sons of Confederate Veterans had already used $52,000 of the $2.5 million to pay their lawyer. Elizabeth Haddix, a lawyer representing Chapel Hill students and faculty members, requested that amount be returned, along with the unused funds.
Under the terms of the original settlement, the $2.5 million went into an independent trust. Baddour said his overturning of the deal would dissolve the trust as well.
