Fighting for the Capitol Guards Monument

AG Supports Position of Ft. Smith Attorney Joey McCutchen

In January, 2023 Arkansas’ leading FOI legal warrior, Joey McCutchen of Ft. Smith, sued the City of Little Rock on behalf of Little Rock resident Jay Clark, challenging the City's decision to secretly remove the Capitol Guards Monument from the American Civil War memorial in MacArthur Park back in 2020.

“The monument, an 8-foot bronze statue of a Confederate soldier topping a 16-foot granite column commemorating Company A, Capitol Guards, was dedicated in 1911 during a meeting of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It was vandalized by what appeared to be varnish in June 2020 during the nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd.”

On July 15, 2024, the Arkansas Attorney General filed a Motion to Intervene in the case and a legal brief affirming the constitutionality of the Arkansas Monument Protection Act. The Brief is responding to the City of Little Rock’s unfounded claims that the Act constitutes an unconstitutional taking of property.

The Attorney General’s Brief accurately points out that the City does not have any ownership interest in the Monument yet has “allege[d] unbound dominion and control over the display and subsequent storage of the Monument.”  As the brief accurately argues, the Monument is public property, was displayed on public property, and the City had no right to remove the Monument, or to confine it to a storage building indefinitely.

The Monument Protection Act passed overwhelmingly in 2021 in the Arkansas House (72-16) and Senate (27-5) with an emergency clause.

McCutchen said,

The City of Little Rock and Mayor Frank Scott have repeatedly thumbed their nose at the law by unlawfully removing the Monument, breaching the contract with the Arkansas Historical Preservation Program, and Mayor Scott acting unilaterally to remove the Monument in the cover of darkness without approval from the Little Rock Board of Directors. And now the City unbelievably seeks to have the Arkansas Monument Protection Act declared unconstitutional thereby doing away with the protections created by the Act to safeguard all historical monuments like the Capitol Guards Monument and The Little Rock Nine Monument.

The case is set for trial on Wednesday, September 18, 2024, at 9:00am in the Pulaski County Circuit Court.

(Quotes from McCutchen’s press release.)