A federal judge has ordered the Shenandoah County School Board in Virginia to remove Confederate military names from two schools, ruling that the decision to reinstate them discriminated against Black students and violated their constitutional rights.
In an opinion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court of Virginia, Judge Michael F. Urbanski stated that the school board's decision violated the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, which prohibits racial discrimination by state-supported institutions. The court also found the decision to be in violation of the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.
Urbanski described the Confederate army officers' names as "vestiges" of Shenandoah County's history of segregation, which mandated separate schools for Black and white students. "The Confederate names were restored with complete awareness of their historic legacy and ongoing discriminatory impact," Urbanski wrote. "In the court’s view, the affirmative act of reinstating these vestiges of segregation is far more problematic than a passive failure to remove a long-standing name or symbol."
The judge directed the school board to select new names on a "racially nondiscriminatory basis with all deliberate speed." He emphasized that schools should provide an educational environment free from the remnants of racial discrimination, unlike memorials honoring Confederate figures.
The Virginia NAACP, which represented six students and their parents in the lawsuit, called the ruling a "decisive victory." The organization filed the suit in June 2024 after the school board voted 5-1 to change Mountain View High School back to Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary back to Ashby-Lee Elementary. These changes reversed a 2020 decision to remove the names, made against the backdrop of nationwide protests against racial injustice.
The NAACP argued that requiring Black students, who constitute less than 3% of the school system's population, to attend schools named after Confederate figures amounted to endorsing the Confederacy's defense of slavery and its modern symbolism within white supremacist movements.
Board members who supported the name restoration cited popular community sentiment and argued that previous boards had ignored constituents and due process in removing the names in 2020. These actions occurred during a period when, under President Donald Trump's second administration, efforts were made to restore some statues honoring Confederate figures that had been removed in 2020.