A Jacksonville-area civil rights activist’s lawsuit over using tax money to maintain Confederate monuments should be thrown out of court, lawyers for the state and city are telling a federal judge.
Earl M. Johnson Jr., who organized the nonprofit Take It Down Inc. to champion removing the monuments from public land, argued in a suit filed in July that using taxpayer money for tributes to the Confederacy violated the U.S. Constitution’s 13th and 14th Amendments.
But a lawyer for the state argued last week that Johnson “has failed to allege any actual, justiciable case or controversy … that demonstrate a real threat of immediate injury that needs to be resolved.”