A Virginia school board violated students’ First Amendment rights when it restored the name of a Confederate general to its high school, a federal judge decided this week.
District Judge Michael F. Urbanski determined in a 71-page opinion Tuesday that the Shenandoah County school board’s decision last year to reverse course and reinstate the name “Stonewall Jackson High School” made students “mobile billboards” for the restored Confederate name and the school board’s message, thus violating their free speech rights.
The complaint—brought by the Virginia chapter of the NAACP and the parents of five students who attend the high school—challenged a May 10, 2024, vote by the school board to reinstate the names Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School. The school names—which, in addition to the Confederate general Jackson, evoke Confederate General Robert E. Lee and cavalry officer Turner Ashby—had been retired four years prior, as part of a broader wave of schools dropping Confederate names after the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis focused attention nationally on racism.
Shenandoah County later became the first school district to bring back Confederate names.
Another district in Texas followed suit in August and restored Lee’s name to its high school and separate 9th grade campus. That vote came as President Donald Trump’s administration attempts to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts from schools and other parts of government. The president himself has also waded into a battle over a New York district’s refusal to drop a Native American mascot prohibited by a state policy, which has similarly seen a pendulum swing after many schools ceased using such logos.
In Shenandoah County, the reinstatement of the Stonewall Jackson name, which is featured on athletic uniforms and other school attire, means that students are “endorsing” the Confederate general, the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit argued.
Urbanski, an appointee of President Barack Obama, agreed that the school board was “compelling students to advance the school board’s chosen message favoring ‘Stonewall Jackson’ through the conduct of extracurricular activities rendered expressive by that name.”
Urbanski’s ruling addresses only the name of the district’s high school.
School board Chairman Dennis Barlow did not respond to a request for comment. After the vote was taken last year, he told Education Week, “the reliably liberal outlets have been critical, but most letters and emails I get applaud the decision to let history win out over ‘woke’ politics.”
The Rev. Cozy Bailey, the NAACP’s Virginia State Conference president, applauded the ruling, saying in a statement that it “reinforces what we know to be true; those who led the Confederacy should not be honored.”
In his opinion, Urbanski wrote that the Stonewall Jackson name “stands as a symbol conveying an expressive message”—one that has historically been used to “signify racial exclusion in the particular context of naming schools.”
The NAACP and the parents had asked the court to find that the school board violated both the First and Fourteenth amendments by restoring the Stonewall Jackson name, along with the team name the “Generals.”
Their request that the name again be retired and the district be prohibited from using Confederate names or references in the future will be considered at a December trial.
Approximately 340 schools in 21 states currently bear the names of Confederate figures, according to Education Week’s research. Since June 29, 2020, at least 59 Confederate-named schools have been changed to, and still have, non-Confederate names.
