RICHMOND, Va. (CN) - Virginia Democrats celebrated the advancement of a bill Tuesday that stops the issuance of license plates honoring Robert E. Lee as part of a broader effort to cut ties with the state's Confederate past.
The bill, introduced by Delegate Dan Helmer, is one of a slew of measures targeting the removal of tax dollars from policies that support a Lost Cause narrative. The Lost Cause was a prominent myth spread in southern states like Virginia to reframe the Civil War as a war about state rights and cultural differences rather than the Union's effort to abolish slavery.
"Those areas belong in museums, they belong in history books," Democratic Delegate Michael Feggans said. "They don't belong being supported by Virginia's tax dollars."
Over 30 Black lawmakers, including the Speaker of the House of Delegates Don Scott, roam the halls of Virginia's Capitol building - 161 years after Union soldiers forced the Confederacy to abandon Richmond, where it had set up its Capitol. The legislature operates less than three miles from the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Democratic Delegate Alex Askew introduced a bill for the fourth consecutive session that would eliminate the state recordation tax exemption for the Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy implemented in 1950, and the tax-exempt designation for real and personal property owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the General Organization of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Confederate Memorial Literary Society, the Virginia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans, the Stonewall Jackson Memorial, Incorporated, and the J.E.B. Stuart Birthplace Preservation Trust, Inc.
State code exempts most nonprofit organizations, including hospitals and churches. Askew's bill allows localities to continue these exemptions while removing any mandatory state exemptions. Former Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed the measure in 2025, arguing the legislature should broadly reform tax exemptions rather than targeting specific organizations.
"The property tax exemption by designation is ripe for reform, delineated by inconsistencies and discrepancies," Youngkin said. "Narrowly targeting specific organizations to gain or lose such tax exemptions sets an inappropriate precedent. Initially, the General Assembly granted exemptions through a three-quarters vote of both chambers, but now, a simple majority can revoke them. Choosing winners and losers is imprudent and undermines the tax system's fairness."
The new version of the bill passed through the House of Delegates on Tuesday on a 62-35 vote.
"For decades, Confederate organizations have enjoyed special tax carve-outs that were never about fairness," Askew said at a committee hearing. "They're about preserving a narrative that held Virginia back."
The United Daughters of the Confederacy claims to have nearly 12,000 members. The organization, which worked tirelessly during the Jim Crow era to erect monuments honoring Confederates and lobby to write history textbooks reflecting its version of why the war happened, states on its website that it denounces any individual or group that promotes racial divisiveness.
"Passage of HB167 is viewpoint discrimination," United Daughters of the Confederacy Julie Hardaway said in a press release. "Passage of this bill will set a precedent to open the door for other valuable historical museums to lose tax-exempt status and opens wide the door for legal action. Is this simply a test case before moving on to bigger and better targets, including churches?"
Legislators also hope to change the way the Virginia Military Institute portrays its participation in the Civil War. Helmer passed a bill through the House of Delegates on a 71-24 vote that establishes a task force to distance the institution from the Lost Cause narrative. Student cadets from the institute were among the makeshift Confederate army that defeated the Union in the Battle of New Market.
Lt. Gen. David Furness, the institution's current superintendent, opposed the bill, arguing that Virginia Military Institute has progressed and continues to do so.
"It is hard for me to understand how the institution lauded for its leadership model by so many notable state and national leaders could be described by the patron of this bill as committed to the Lost Cause of the Confederacy," Furness said at a committee hearing. "That may have been true of VMI in the past, but it is not now, nor will it be in the future."
Democratic State Senator Adam Ebbin passed a bill through his chamber on a party vote Monday that would remove three Confederate monuments that inhabit Capitol Square.
"These are not people we need to lionize," Ebbin said in a committee hearing. "We need to think about who we venerate as a commonwealth."
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle supported Ebbin's legislation that repeals the official state song emeritus status for James Bland's "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny." The song, which the General Assembly designated in 1940, is sung from the perspective of a formerly enslaved person who longs for life on the plantation.
Source: Courthouse News Service
