Davidson County state court chancery judge Ellen Hobbs Lyle ruled on Wednesday that the removal of three statutes of Confederate generals in Memphis public parks did not violate state law.

The Tennessee Heritage Protection Act [text] prohibits the removal of monuments with historical significance from public property. However, the city sold [AP report] the parks to a nonprofit, Memphis Greenspace [advocacy website]. Memphis Greenspace then removed the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest, Jefferson Davis and J Harvey Mathes. Lyle ruled that since Memphis Greenspace was a private organization, no state law had been violated.

The mayor of Memphis, Jim Strickland [official profile], said [Twitter], “This ruling reaffirms what we’re said from the start: Everything was handled in a lawful manner.”

A spokesperson for the plaintiffs, a Tennessee branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) [advocacy website], said that the SCV “will continue to pursue justice to save and preserve the historic memorial statues in Memphis.”

Confederate symbols and war monuments have become increasingly controversial. In November the Supreme Court declined [JURIST report] to hear an appeal after a lower court dismissed a suit to declare the Confederate flag, which makes up a portion of the Mississippi state flag, an “unconstitutional emblem of slavery.” In September a federal judge stopped [JURIST report] Dallas from removing a statute of Robert E Lee. In March 2017 a federal appeals court ruled [JURIST report] that New Orleans could remove Confederate statutes.