ASHEVILLE, NC (828newsNOW.com) — North Carolina’s Supreme Court has sided with the City of Asheville in its long legal battle over the removal of the Vance Monument from downtown’s Pack Square Park.
In a ruling issued Friday, the state’s highest court modified a Court of Appeals ruling but upheld its net effect: dismissal of a historical society’s claims seeking a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction and declaratory judgment to block or reverse the removal of the monument.
The cornerstone of the towering obelisk first was laid in 1897, honoring former Gov. Zebulon Vance, a Reems Creek Valley native. By 2008, with the monument in disrepair and considered structurally unstable, a group dedicated to preserving the history of the 26th North Carolina State Troops raised $138,447.38 to restore the monument and donated the monument to the city under an agreement.
But that monument later would became a focal point of protests during the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. Critics pointed to Vance’s history with slavery.
The North Carolina Division of State Historic Sites and Properties says Vance “became one of the most famous and controversial politicians in North Carolina history,” in part because his household “relied on the labor of enslaved people.”
After protests simmered throughout 2020, that December the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners and Asheville City Council both voted to remove the monument.
As Friday’s state Supreme Court cites, the City Council decided the Vance Monument had become a “public safety threat in the community” because “the monument ha(d) been vandalized and the City ha(d) received significant threats that members of the public w(ould) attempt to topple the structure.”
The historical preservation society filed a complaint in court seeking to block the removal, citing an alleged breech of the restoration and donation agreement. The city soon filed a motion to dismiss the breach of contract claim and other claims. In April 2021 a trial court denied the historical society’s motion for a stay blocking the monument’s removal.
The Court of Appeals later ruled, in part, that the plaintiff’s breach of contract claim should be dismissed for lack of standing. In the new decision, the Supreme Court found fault with that portion of the Court of Appeals decision.
“However, plaintiff abandoned the merits of its breach of contract claim in its appeal to this Court,” justices wrote. “Therefore, plaintiff has failed to assert any ground for which it has standing to contest removal of the monument, and we affirm the portion of the Court of Appeals’ decision affirming the trial court’s dismissal of plaintiff’s claims for a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction and a declaratory judgment.”
The full ruling is HERE.