VIRGINIA: IN THE CIRCUIT COURT FOR THE CITY OF NORFOLK

ROY L. PERRY-BEY and

RONALD M. GREEN
Docket No.: CL19-3928
vs.

CITY OF NORFOLK

PETITION FOR EX PARTE PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

Plaintiffs, hereby files this Petition for an Ex Parte Preliminary Injunction, and

in support thereof avers the following:

1. Plaintiffs has filed a Complaint with this Court against the City of Norfolk

(“Norfolk”). A True and correct copy of the Complaint made by reference is

incorporated herein as if set forth fully.

2. The Complaint seeks equitable relief to enjoin (“Norfolk”) from taking actions

contrary to provisions of § 2 and § 15 of the City’s Charter and a Resolution 1,678

executed between Norfolk City Council, the City of Norfolk, and City Attorney’s

Office to enforce City Council’s unanimous legislative action on August 22, 2017,

to remove or relocate the City’s Confederate monument (“symbol of inhumanity”).

3. Plaintiffs has no adequate remedy at law to restrain Norfolk from its Display

of religious bigotry, hate, violence, discrimination, intimidation, white supremacy,

and Jim Crow segregation directed at them the Confederate monument represents.

4. A preliminary injunction will properly upend the status quo to prevent further

irreparable to the Plaintiffs.

5. The issuance of an injunction will pose no harm to the City of Norfolk or to the

public health, safety or welfare.

6. Plaintiffs is likely to prevail on the merits considering the facts the City in

issuing the Resolution and ask the Attorney General for an opinion to clarify the

meaning of the state codes provisions relating to the removal of war memorials,

also, the Norfolk's city attorney and a deputy commonwealth's attorney wrote

opinions saying the law doesn't apply to Norfolk's monument because it

was erected before 1997. See (“Exhibits In Support”).

7. The history of Tidewater localities and the Monuments of Norfolk is beyond

the restrictions in Va. Code § 15.2-1812 and Va. Code§ 18.2-137. Norfolk has not

served as a county seat since at least 1846. (As of 1846 the seat of Norfolk County

was in present-day Portsmouth.) No Monument has been put up in a municipality

since.

8. There are no individual laws or restrictions governing the city owned property,

(“Title”), its (“public nuisance”), (“Confederate Monument”), held in trust, that

implicate Va. Code § 15.2-1812, the removal or relocation of monuments and

through its predecessor statutes Va. Code § 18.2-137 (the statute imposing criminal

penalties for removal, etc of war monuments).

_________________
8. The City of Norfolk’s only self imposed restrictions and concerns with
applicable pre-1997 law, to remove or relocate its Confederate Monument is
on “philosophical grounds, not on legal or ownership grounds”. Id.
9. The current (“property title”), status held in trust by the City of Norfolk does

not preclude the full adjudication of the merits of the Plaintiffs lawsuit, including

granting of any remedies to which the Plaintiffs may demonstrate.

10. The only restrictions on local governments such as (“Norfolk”), removal that

are applicable to pre-1997 law to protect the monuments are those found within

the original grant of authority, those imposed by localities on themselves, or deeds

associated with it and not Va. Code§ 18.2-137.

11. The Code section does not apply to any monument or memorial constructed

prior to 1904. The Circuit Court of Danville ruled in Heritage Preservation

Association, Inc. v. City of Danville that it does not apply to any monument or

memorial erected within an independent city prior to 1997. Nor does it apply to

a monument or memorial erected on any property other than the “public square”

at the county seat before the same year.

12. The Virginia Supreme Court of Virginia decline to grant a writ in the case

(Record No. 160310), both on initial petition (June 17, 2016) and on a request

for rehearing (October 7, 2016).

13. No definition of “public square” appears in the current code, nor apparently

historically within the Code.

_____________
4. The Plaintiffs are entitle to freedom of and from government sponsored and
endorsed Confederacy, (“White Supremacy”) is a fundamental right under
the Fourteenth Amendment.
14. A number of older enactments refer to a public square as an area of land where

the county courthouse, clerk’s office and other official county buildings were

located. See, e.g., 1890 Va. Acts ch. 632 (describing laying out a public square

for the new county seat of wise County).

15. Norfolk’s Confederate Monument was erected in 1898, on the public right-of-

way at the head of Commercial Place (earlier known as Market Square) for the

traffic of foreign nationals labeled property, (“Slaves”), on which the cornerstone

was laid and removed or relocated in 1965 from its original site, dismantled and

stored at the art museum with exception of the Standard Bearer. See (Exhibit 11).

16. The relocation was to make possible the development of the former Virginia

National Bank Building and re-erected in 1971, near its original site in downtown

adjacent to today’s Icon Norfolk Apartments.

17. Section 2742 of the Code of Virginia approved February 8, 1930, is

unambiguous and unchallengeable, the General Assembly passed in February

1904, and subsequently enacted a number of changes to this statute. In 1910, it

added the ability of a county’s board of supervisors to appropriate funds” to

complete or aid in the erection of a monument to the Confederate soldiers of

such county seat. The General Assembly first passed the predecessor statute

to Code § 15.2-1812 in 1904. That statute applied only to actions by counties

and was silent as to municipalities. See Benrus Watch Co. v. Kirsch 198 Va.

94 (Va. 1956).
18. The Resolution 1,678 to relocate the Confederate monument passed by Council

August 22, 2017, according to the provisions of § 15 of the City’s Charter shall be

in effect thirty days from the date of their passage. However, the City has delayed,

failed, obfuscated, refused or neglected as a matter of law, to enforce it, constitutes

an unreasonable or dereliction duty under law.

19. The June 28, 1898, Resolution between the City of Norfolk, and the Pickett

Buchahan Camp Confederate Veterans, that granted it permission to erect the

Confederate monument does not bind future city councils of the City of Norfolk,

and does not grant any rights, interest, privileges or restrictions in the City of

Norfolk’s property.

20. The Virginia Code § 15.2-1812, as a matter of law, does not apply retroactively

to the Confederate Monument honoring the Confederate States of America at issue

in this litigation, which the Pickett Buchahan Camp Confederate Veterans was

permitted to erect in the City of Norfolk’s public right-of-way in 1898. See Arey

v. Lindsey, 103 Va. 25, 252 (1904).

21. Based on the plain language of the June 28, 1889, Resolution, the monument

at issue in this litigation is, as a matter of fact, is a monument commemorating

the Confederacy, it’s dead and recognizing “Virginia’s historical status, as among

the Confederate States of America,” and marking the head of Old Market Square

(Commercial Place), as the heart of the Confederacy, (“White Supremacy”).

22. The Monument at issue in this litigation is not, as a matter of fact, a monument

“for any war or conflict, or any engagement of such war or conflict” or for war

veterans. As a monument to the Confederacy of historical significance rather

than a monument to a war, conflict, engagement, or war veterans, the monument

at issue in this litigation is not covered by Virginia Code § 15.2-1812.

23. The Virginia Supreme Court declined to overturn the Danville Circuit Court

ruling, that Code § 15.2-1812, Heritage Preservation Association, Inc. v. City

of Danville, does not apply retroactively to monuments erected in an independent

city before 1997. Norfolk dates to 1898.

24. The decisions of the Virginia Supreme Court declining to hear a case, can be

appealed to the United States Supreme Court, but the U.S. Supreme Court seldom

agrees to consider such cases. There is virtually no chance that the U.S. Supreme

Court will hear an appeal from a Virginia Court if the case deals only with the

interpretation of Virginia State law rather than federal law.

25. The City’s perpetual display of historical hatred, bigotry and violence directed

at the Plaintiffs, to reinforce it’s public endorsement of White Supremacy, religious

bigotry, racial hate, assaults, segregation, murder and lynching of their ancestors, is

to painful to live under.

26. The only way to prevent further irreparable harm and interference with

Plaintiffs rights is through the issuance of an ex parte preliminary injunction.

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs respectfully request that this Honorable Court issue a

preliminary injunction enjoining the City of Norfolk’s failure to comply with the

longstanding rule in Virginia that statutes “are construed to operate prospectively

only, unless, on the face of the instrument or enactment, the contrary intention

is manifest beyond reasonable question, as legal justification for its unreasonable

delay, enforcing it’s obligations pursuant provisions of § 2 and § 15 of Norfolk’s

City Charter authorizing the removal, relocation or otherwise disposal of the

City’s Confederate monument a (“symbol of inhumanity”), and enjoin the City

Attorney’s Office from taking any further action that may cause the Plaintiffs

to suffer unavoidable irreparable harm due to the Norfolk’s refusal to remove its

Confederate monument’s display of hate speech, directed at them based on their

race and it’s regulated private content of White Supremacy and African Inferiority,

on behalf of Southern Confederate States of America. In furtherance of violating

their constitutional rights, inflicting undeserved oppression, physical, mental and

emotional hurt; and preventing the City manager from removing, relocating, or

otherwise disposal of the City’s Confederate monument in accordance with the

provisions of § 1, § 2 and § 15 of the City’s Charter. See Arey v. Lindsey, 103

Va. 25, 252 (1904).

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2. Defendants unreasonable delay, failure or refusal to remove or relocate its Confederate
monument amounts to the City’s tacit approval of the religious bigotry, hate, violence,
discrimination, segregation, divisiveness, intimidation, white supremacy, slavery, right
wing extremism, antisemitism and treason that the Confederate monument represents.
PLAINTIFFS’ PETITION FOR EX PARTE
PRELIMINATORY INJUNCTION
Docket No.: CL19-3928
-Page 8

Respectfully Submitted,

By_______________________________ By_______________________________
MR. ROY L. PERRY- BEY MR. RONALD M. GREEN
89 LINCOLN STREET #1772 5540 BARNHOLLOW ROAD
HAMPTON, VIRGINIA 23669 NORFOLK, VA 23502

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esS6t2QPiAk
 CERTIFICATION OF SERVICE

I hereby certify that a true copy of the foregoing was mailed on this 29th day
of April, 2019 to Defendants Bernard A. Pishko, Norfolk City Attorney, City
Attorney's Office, City of Norfolk, City Hall Building, 9th Floor, 810 Union
Street, Norfolk, VA 23510.

By_______________________________
MR. ROY L. PERRY- BEY, PLAINTIFF
89 LINCOLN STREET #1772
HAMPTON, VIRGINIA 23669

By_______________________________
MR. RONALD M. GREEN, PLAINTIFF
5540 BARNHOLLOW ROAD
NORFOLK, VA 23502