Attorneys for the Virginia Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the national organization of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), have filed a response to the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles’ (DMV) Motion to Vacate a 2001 decision of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia and a 2002 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
Those decisions and resulting court orders instructed the Virginia DMV to begin issuing the specialty license plates bearing the SCV’s Confederate Battle flag-themed logo. The original lawsuit, Sons of Confederate Veterans v. Holcomb, was sparked in 1999 when the Virginia General Assembly voted to approve the SCV’s specialty tag, but only after illegally removing the organization’s logo from the plate – the first and only logo ever so censored by the Virginia legislature.
On June 23, 2015, Virginia Governor McAuliffe announced that because of a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision inWalker (denying the Texas Division of the SCV specialty tags with their logo), that the Virginia Division SCV specialty license plates – which have been issued by the DMV for nearly fourteen years now – would be rescinded. On June 29, a public letter from Tracy Clary, the Virginia Division SCV Commander, questioned whether the Governor or the DMV even had such authority, absent a court order.
Earlier this week, the SCV retained counsel to make that determination and file a response to the Virginia DMV’s Motion to Vacate the earlier judgment. “The Governor on his authority alone does not have the power to demand license plates off of the street,” opined Fred D. Taylor, an attorney (SUFFOLK, VA) for the SCV. “In fact, the Walker decision does not automatically remove the Virginia SCV’s logo either,” Taylor continued. “When comparing the two cases, the procedure for issuing specialty license plates is so vastly different between Texas and Virginia that there is an important legal question as to whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s Walker decision even applies here,” Taylor concluded. The SCV argues in their brief that the Commonwealth’s Motion to Vacate should therefore be denied.
A hearing on the Commonwealth’s Motion to Vacate Judgment and Dissolve Injunction is currently scheduled for July 31, 2015, at 11:00 AM at the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia in Danville.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans is the direct heir of the United Confederate Veterans, and the oldest hereditary organization for male descendants of Confederate soldiers. Organized in Richmond in 1896, the SCV continues to serve as a historical, patriotic, and non-political organization dedicated to insuring that a true history of the 1861-1865 period is preserved.
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