Banned from Charlottesville: League of the South, top officials reach deal keeping them out of town
If there’s a second “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the League of the South won’t be there.
The City of Charlottesville and the racist, neo-Confederate group, along with its top leaders, have reached a deal barring Michael Tubbs, Spencer Borum and any directors, officers, members or agents from the League of the South from holding future armed protests in the city.
The consent decree, which awaited Judge Richard Moore’s signature on Monday, comes in a lawsuit brought in October by the Georgetown Law’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.
The lawsuit, filed in Charlottesville Circuit Court, seeks to bar key “Unite the Right” organizers and an array of participating private paramilitary groups and their commanders from returning to Virginia to conduct illegal paramilitary activity.
Along with a bevy of local businesses, the city of Charlottesville joined the lawsuit.
The consent decree doesn’t come with an admission of any wrongdoing and covers only the League of the South, Tubbs and Borum.
Others named in the suit, including the Traditionalist Worker Party and its leader, Matthew Heimbach, Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler, Redneck Revolt and the National Socialist Movement, are not mentioned in the text of the order.
The Unite the Right rally in August turned into a series of violent protests, with 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a counter-protestor, being killed. James Alex Fields, Jr., has been charged with first-degree murder and accused of running his car into a crowd, striking Heyer.
At least two federal lawsuits are pending as a result of the rally.
In one suit, U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel Hoppe on Monday ordered Michael “Enoch” Peinovich, racist alt-right front man Richard Spencer and Fields to begin the pre-trial disclosure process to move the lawsuits forward.
The ruling means Peinovich, Spencer and Fields would have to turn over a variety of information about their online contacts from Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets.
Peinovich, Spencer and Fields had sought to delay making any disclosures to the plaintiffs until a motion to dismiss was ruled upon.
