Shenandoah County, Virginia school board voted to restore Confederate-general names to two public schools

On May 9, 2024, the Shenandoah County School Board voted 5-1 to reverse a 2020 decision and restore Confederate-general names to two public schools, renaming Mountain View High School back to Stonewall Jackson High School and Honey Run Elementary School back to Ashby Lee Elementary School. The vote came after a lengthy public hearing at Peter Muhlenberg Middle School in Woodstock, Virginia, that ran past midnight; five of the board's six members, elected in the two cycles since the 2020 renaming, voted to restore the names, with Vice Chairman Kyle Gutshall casting the lone dissenting vote. Board members who supported restoring the names said the 2020 board had acted in haste without adequate community input; opponents, including parents and students who addressed the board, said the reversal would resurrect names tied to segregation and Jim Crow-era resistance to school integration.

The Virginia State Conference of the NAACP and five Shenandoah County students filed a federal lawsuit against the school board, alleging the renaming created an unlawful, discriminatory educational environment for Black students in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act.

Updates

2025-01-22 — Federal judge denied school board's motion to dismiss NAACP lawsuit [5]

U.S. District Judge Michael F. Urbanski denied the Shenandoah County School Board's motion to dismiss, allowing the students' and Virginia NAACP's lawsuit to proceed on First Amendment, Equal Protection, and federal anti-discrimination claims, finding it plausible the board reinstated the Confederate names "because of, not merely in spite of" their discriminatory effect.

2025-09-09 — Federal judge ruled the renaming violated students' First Amendment rights [4]

U.S. District Court Judge Michael F. Urbanski ruled that the school board's 2024 renaming violated students' First Amendment rights, finding that the "Stonewall Jackson" name "is expressive as a symbol of racial exclusion in public schools."

2026-08-07 — Judge ruled the renaming also violated the 14th Amendment and civil rights laws, ordered names removed [4]

Judge Urbanski ruled that the board's 2024 decision additionally violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, writing that "the decision to rename the schools after Confederate leaders cannot be divorced from racial discrimination" and that the board's stated 2024 rationale was not genuine, since the renaming question had already gone through a fair process in 2022. He ordered the board to remove the Confederate names and select new ones on a "racially nondiscriminatory basis."