PHILADELPHIA – A Friday ruling from the Commonwealth Court has dictated that a controversial statue of explorer Christopher Columbus will not only remain in South Philadelphia’s Marconi Plaza, but will be displayed openly and be removed from a plywood box it was contained in for two-and-a-half years.
In doing so, the Commonwealth Court’s Dec. 9 ruling upheld an earlier one from Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas Judge Paula Patrick, which found that the City of Philadelphia did not have legal grounds to remove the statue or obscure it from public view in the wooden box.
Crews removed the box surrounding the statue on Sunday night.
Patrick’s ruling last year had overturned prior decisions from the City of Philadelphia’s Board of License and Inspection Review and the Philadelphia Historical Commission to remove the 146 year-old statue.
After both of those organizations opted to remove the Columbus statue, the Friends of Marconi Plaza, its President Rich Cedrone and local resident Joseph Q. Mirarchi filed legal action in a Philadelphia court, appealing the decisions and fighting to have the statue remain in Marconi Plaza.
The statue became a source of controversy and a focus of racial injustice protesters in the summer of 2020, during social unrest in Philadelphia after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Many in Philadelphia, a city with a large Italian-American community, said that the statue represented their ancestry. However, others claimed that Columbus and the statue which honors him is a symbol of racism and oppression.
Violent clashes took place between the statue’s defenders and protesters at Marconi Plaza in June 2020, resulting in police responding to the scene in order to control the crowd.
As a result, the City looked to remove the statue from Marconi Plaza, feeling that its continued presence constituted an ongoing danger to the public. The Philadelphia Historical Commission and the City of Philadelphia Board of License and Inspection Review concurred, both deciding in favor of the statue’s removal.
Prior to the planned removal, the statue was covered and contained by a plywood box.
However, Patrick ruled last year that the City’s grounds for removal were legally flawed.
“The record before this Court was devoid as to any ongoing civil unrest. Accordingly, it was arbitrary for the Philadelphia Historical Commission to interpret that the statue’s removal was necessary in the public interest based on those transient and isolated incidents,” Patrick said.
“This Court notes that no evidence was presented to the PHC or the Board that a history of civil unrest surrounding, and with respect to, the statue existed, nor has any been present since June 23, 2020. Therefore, it was an error of law for the Board to affirm the PHC and it would be error for this Court to affirm the same.”
Commonwealth Court Finds That the Statue Should Remain, Unobscured
While the City vigorously opposed Patrick’s ruling in the trial court and argued that the plaintiffs did not possess legal standing to challenge the statue’s removal and/or obscuring, the Commonwealth Court disagreed.
In registering its disagreement, the Court cited a 1998 “Policy on the Donation, Placement and Removal of Public Art” entitled “Managing Director’s Directive 67”.
“First, Directive 67 states, explicitly, that the Office of Arts shall take no ‘further action on the proposal’ to remove the Columbus statue ‘due to public protest’ until it has provided a ‘public input’ process of ‘no less than 90 days.’ ‘Further action’ includes the submission of an application to the Historical Commission,” Commonwealth Court Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt stated.
“The Office of Arts violated Directive 67 by taking this ‘further action’ before expiration of the 90-day period for public input. Likewise, the Office of Arts’ application to the Art Commission for approval to remove the statue also violated the prohibition against ‘further action’ in Directive 67. Neither the Historical Commission nor the Art Commission can act on an invalid application.”
The Court further rejected a suggestion from the City that it can remedy the City’s failure to follow Directive 67 by directing the mandatory public input period of 90 days to begin now, after the fact. Such a move would, in the Court’s mind, “render the 90-day opportunity for public comment illusory, depriving citizens of their ability and right to provide meaningful input to the Office of Arts.”
“The Office of Arts’ application to remove the Columbus statue from its current site before completion of the period for public input violated Directive 67. This cannot be remedied except by starting the public input period over and waiting until it is complete before the Office of Arts takes any further action with respect to the removal of the Columbus statue from Marconi Plaza, such as the submission of a new application to the Historical Commission,” Leavitt said.
“The application submitted by the Office of Arts to the Historical Commission violated Directive 67 and, thus, is a nullity. The Historical Commission lacked jurisdiction to receive the application submitted prior to completion of the 90-day period of public input, let alone to act upon that application. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the order of the trial court.”
Leavitt’s majority opinion included her colleague, Commonwealth Court Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon. The third member of the bench to consider the opinion, Commonwealth Court Judge Michael H. Wojcik, dissented from the majority.
“I dissent. The City of Philadelphia’s Managing Director suspended his Directive 67 prior to the proposal’s submission herein to move the City’s Christopher Columbus statue from Marconi Plaza. As a result, it cannot provide a basis upon which the trial court below could reverse the City’s administrative decisions authorizing the statue’s removal in an appeal to that court from those decisions. Accordingly, unlike the majority, I would reverse the trial court’s order in this matter,” Wojcik concluded.
A spokesperson for the City released a statement in response to the ruling.
“While we will respect this decision, we will also continue to explore our options for a way forward that allows Philadelphians to celebrate their heritage and culture, while respecting the histories and circumstances of everyone’s different backgrounds,” the statement read, in part.
Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania case 938 C.D. 2021
Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas case 201000295
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com