A Virginia school district was sued this week after it restored Confederate military names for two buildings, foreshadowing a broader battle that is heating up ahead of the election.
The Virginia NAACP
sued the school board in Shenandoah County after it voted to change Mountain View High School to Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary back to Ashby Lee Elementary.
The NAACP argues in its federal lawsuit that students’ constitutional rights were violated by the district’s act of reverting back to Confederate names. It invoked the First Amendment and 14th Amendment in its lawsuit, saying it “prohibits racial discrimination in state-supported institutions.”
”By celebrating the memory of these traitors every time a child walked through the school doors, by embracing the cold wind of intolerance and division and insensitivity, the Shenandoah County School Board has resurrected the ghosts of the Jim Crow era,” NAACP Virginia State Conference President Cozy Bailey said.
The group asked the U.S. District Court in Harrisonburg to remove the Confederate names and mascots from the schools.
