Bill would give DeSantis power to punish those who remove Confederate memorials

Gov. Ron DeSantis would have the authority to remove and fine any elected official involved in the taking down of Confederate and other historical memorials in the state under a bill filed for the next legislative session.

The measure (HB 395), filed last week by state Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, also would require the state to pay the costs to find a new location for and publicly display the statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith that stood in the U.S. Capitol for nearly a century, representing Florida.

That statue was removed from the Capitol's National Statuary Hall and replaced last year by one of legendary civil-rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune, one of the namesakes of what is now Bethune-Cookman University, the historically Black institution of higher education in Daytona Beach.

The bill says that "an accurate and factual history belongs to all Floridians and future generations and the state has an obligation to protect and preserve such history." A request for comment from Black is pending.

The fatal shooting of nine Black members of a Charleston, South Carolina church in 2015 sparked a nationwide drive to remove Confederate symbols from public display, a 2017 White nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia and the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis while in police custody, added fuel to the Black Lives Matters movement and related protests.

The bill, if passed and signed into law, would lead to "elected officials" being removed from office and attach fines and damages to any "person or entity" who "remove(s) a monument or memorial displayed on public property." Also, individuals who deface or damage monuments and memorials would face up to $5,000 in fines.

Retired FSU president ordered removal of statue from campus

Then-Florida State University President John Thrasher ordered the removal of a statue of Francis Eppes from the school's Tallahassee campus; Eppes, the slave-owning nephew of Thomas Jefferson, donated land for what eventually became FSU.

And the bill is retroactive to 2017, which would include Thrasher's action three years ago when he banished the Eppes statue from campus. In fact, as written, the bill would require the statue to be returned to campus.

Furthermore, Thrasher and possibly other university administrators would be liable for triple the amount of the full cost to return the statue to a green near the Westcott administration building and be subject to punitive damages.

In the aftermath of the 2017 Charlottesville rally, FSU students turned their attention to the Eppes statue. Two years of protests ended with Thrasher’s unexpected announcement that Eppes, a former Tallahassee mayor who also led patrols looking for runaway slaves, would be banned from campus.

Within hours, the statue disappeared. It is one of 482 Confederate symbols across the country removed, renamed, or relocated from public spaces following the Charleston church shooting.

Bill would pay for move of Confederate statue taken from U.S. Capitol

The Florida Legislature paid $25,000 to bring the life-size bronze statue of Smith, the last general with a major force to surrender at the end of the Civil War, back to Florida.

His home city, St. Augustine, did not want it. The Lake County Commission stepped up to take it, but later backed away when opposition formed; residents pointed out that Smith never lived in the county.

Black wants to give Robert Grenier, the curator of the Lake County Historical Museum and who led the effort to bring Smith home from Washington, until July 2025 to find a location to display Smith. The state would pick up all the costs to transport the statue from storage in Tallahassee and install it for public display.

The bill would force local and appointed officials to balance “undue influence” of groups and people who are “offended” by history with the threat they will lose their job if they move or warehouse a historical statue, monument, or memorial.

James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com and is on X as @CallTallahassee

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Taking down Confederate monuments in Florida could be punished