Appeals Court Kicks Lawsuit Back to State
by Jeremy Morrison
The ghost of Pensacola’s Confederate monument has come back for a haunting, following a federal court’s decision earlier this week to reverse the dismissal of a lawsuit challenging the monument’s removal and to send the matter back to state court.
“ It’s not over until it’s over,” said attorney David McCallister Wednesday.
McCallister is representing a collection of plaintiffs –among them the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Florida chapter of Save Southern Heritage, Inc. –in their challenge to the city of Pensacola’s 2020 removal of the city’s Confederate monument located in what was then called Lee Square but has since been renamed Florida Square.
According to the May 16 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, this case amounted to “ a topsy-turvy procedural mess.” The court rejected the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit following the city’s request to have the case move from state court to the district court. Neither the appeals court or the district court, the reversal rationalizes, has jurisdiction over the matter –that lies back in state court.
“ It’s kind of like being in a baseball game,” McCallister boiled the process down to a sports analogy, “ and there was a long fly ball along the first base line and now the umpire is calling a foul.”
The attorney intends to confirm what exactly the next procedural steps are by next week, but in short McCallister intends to push for a reinstatement of a restraining order formerly in place which sought to prevent the city from removing the Confederate monument. The implications of such a reinstatement would be pretty dramatic.
“ That would imply the city would need to put the monument back where it was when they removed it,” McCallister said. “ They took the risk when they removed it.”
Additionally, the attorney said he’ll also be looking to revive a motion of contempt against Mayor Grover Robinson. That motion was related to the city’s placement of tarps over the monument prior to its removal and McCallister feels it is contextually relevant.
“ That in my opinion is the reason the city and city attorney moved it into federal court,” he said.
While this recent reversal will surely be jarring to those who fought for the city’s Confederate monument’s removal, it’s been clearly energizing to McCallister, who appeared to be in a fighting mood, shadowboxing with melodramatic hyperbole like “ We build monuments, we don’t tear’em down” and “ Be a patriot, learn American values or move to Communist China or Cuba.”
“The Southerners were like the Ukrainians and Lincoln was Putin,” the attorney said.
For its part the city of Pensacola is silent of this recent development.
“ We are not in a position to comment further on this matter due to the pending litigation in federal court,” City PIO Kaycee Lagarde confirmed via email Wednesday.