A federal lawsuit was filed Wednesday challenging the continued existence of a Confederate monument on the lawn of the Talbot County courthouse as "unconstitutional and illegal."
Filed on behalf of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, assistant public defender for Talbot County Kisha Petticolas, the Talbot County Branch of the NAACP and branch president Richard Potter, the complaint demands the Talbot Boys statue be "immediately and permanently" removed and that a federal court ban its display on county property.
"The so-called 'Talbot Boys' statue — an homage to traitors of the United States and to the state of Maryland, who fought to sustain the subjugation of Black people and to tear apart the Union — cannot remain on government property consistent with the core promise of the Fourteenth Amendment to all Americans: equality under the law," the lawsuit states.