A federal judge has ordered a Virginia school board to replace two Confederate school names it restored in 2024, ruling that the decision discriminated against Black students. The ruling is the latest turn in a fight that began when the Virginia NAACP filed a lawsuit after the school board’s 2024 vote reversed changes made during the 2020 racial justice protests. The Confederate school names must now be changed again.
In an opinion filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Virginia, Judge Michael F. Urbanski found that the Shenandoah County School Board violated Black students’ rights under the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.
AP reported that Urbanski described the names honoring Confederate officers as vestiges of the county’s segregationist history. He ordered the board to choose new names on a racially nondiscriminatory basis and to do so “with all deliberate speed.”
