The Tennessee Court of Appeals held Tuesday that the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) do not have standing to prevent the removal of Confederate statutes at parks the City of Memphis had sold to Memphis Greenspace.

In December 2017 the city of Memphis sold parkland to Memphis Greenspace, after which Memphis Greenspace removed statutes of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, President Jefferson Davis and Captain J Harvey Mathes.

The SVC sought injunctive relief from the courts and filed a complaint with the Tennessee Historical Commission (THC) under the Tennessee Heritage Protection Act (THPA), which prevents the removal of memorials on public property.

In its Complaint, SCV sought injunctive relief under Tennessee Code Annotated § 4-1-412(d) pending resolution of its administrative Petition for Declaratory Order. Therefore, SCV was not seeking injunctive relief to enforce a a decision by the Commission; it was asking the trial court to grant injunctive relief in an ancillary action pending a final decision by the Commission.

The court held that SCV did not have standing while a THC decision was pending.

In summary, we find SCV failed to establish it had a right to bring, or the court the authority to consider, a cause of action under the THPA to enjoin temporarily Defendants’ actions regarding the parks or the Statues pending the Commission’s resolution of SCV’s Petition for Declaratory Order. We reiterate that SCV’s Complaint did not “seek injunctive relief … to enforce [the THPA].” … Thus, our purpose is not to address the merits of SCV’s underlying claim or whether, in an enforcement action, the trial court might have jurisdiction under the THPA to enjoin a private entity from further disposing of memorials or issue a mandatory injunction to restore memorials already removed.

The ruling comes after a chancery judge ruled that the removal of the statues did not violate state law.