Confederate monuments

Lawsuits filed to stop the removal of memorials to Confederate leaders and a pro-slavery congressman in a South Carolina city have been dropped. The Post and Courier reports that the American Heritage Association helped fund one of the lawsuits. It had been filed by descendants of John C. Calhoun, a former congressman and vice president who died before the Civil War. The suit had opposed the city of Charleston's removal of Calhoun's statue. Another suit opposed the removal of a Robert E. Lee Memorial Highway marker in Charleston, and the renaming of an auditorium that had been named after a treasury secretary of the Confederacy.

The South Carolina Supreme Court has heard its first challenge to the state law protecting Confederate and other historical monuments since it passed 21 years ago. Justices on Tuesday questioned not only if the entire Heritage Act was constitutional, but if a clause that requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to remove or alter any monument is legal. Lawyers for the state say if the two-thirds requirement is found unconstitutional, a clause in the law allows the rest of it to stand. The people suing over the act say it illegally prevents local governments from running their own affairs.