Va. school board to appeal federal court order to remove Confederate school names

(VIRGINIA MERCURY) - After more than two hours in the second of two closed sessions, the Shenandoah County School Board voted unanimously 6-0 Thursday night to appeal a federal court’s order for the district to remove Confederate names from schools in the county. It may cost millions in taxpayer dollars to contest the decision.

On Aug. 6, U.S. District Court Judge Michael F. Urbanski ruled in favor of the Virginia State Conference of the NAACP and families of six students who sued over the school names. Urbanski found the district’s decision to rebrand the schools with the names of Confederate generals violated multiple civil rights laws and ordered the district to remove them immediately.

The board met Thursday for the first time since the verdict was released, hearing from multiple speakers, with some advocating that the board appeal and fight for the names, and others urging them to move on and avoid the potential costs.

Before going into a closed session on Thursday, the board said it wanted to defend what it views as its lawful local authority over school naming and to challenge what it considers legal, procedural, and factual errors in the district court’s ruling.

“When a federal court’s remedy reaches directly into that local decision-making authority, I believe this board has every right and a responsibility to carefully examine whether that solution is legally justified and whether review by appeals is appropriate,” Board Vice Chair Whitney Pence said at the meeting.

Urbanski wrote that by renaming schools after Gens. Turner Ashby, Robert E. Lee, and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in 2024, the school board violated the students’ First Amendment rights, the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.

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