A crowd gathered outside the courthouse in Orange County, Virginia, demanding the removal of Judge David Franzén after he shared plans to ask the board of supervisors to take down a confederate statue.
Last week Franzén said he was going to decide the fate of a confederate statue that stands in front of the Orange County Courthouse. On Friday, March 25, after some outcry he sent out a clarification calling on orange supervisors to exercise their power to remove the confederate statute
“The purpose of that declaration was to call upon the Board of Supervisors to exercise its legislative power to remove the Confederate statue from the courthouse lawn as an obstruction to the proper administration of justice in Orange County. It was not my intention to Order any action, but rather to defer to the legislative power of the Board,” wrote Franzén in an email.
Many of the protesters felt that this was a overreach of his judicial power, including State Senator Bryce Reeves (R) 17th District, who said:
“He is taking his authority far beyond what he should be doing and engaging in politics…We have a judge just sitting on the bench here this morning, that is trying to impanel, a grand jury to force the orange county board of supervisors to take the action about removing a monument. And that’s outside his lane so to speak.”
Some protesters, such as DJ Anglin, were fine with the removal of the statue, but claimed that this overreach of power was the real issue, telling NBC in an interview:
“We have a law in place on how to address a county board of supervisors as a citizen, not using your position to influence that. You could make those complaints to the county board of supervisors and they would make that decision. If a community wants to have something removed, there’s a process for that, to petition their legislators or their supervisors. Through a referendum process, what this judge is trying to do is stick his nose where it doesn’t belong, and try to force that process”
As of now, the statue remain standing and the protests seem to be continuing until action has been take.