A Florida Republican has re-filed a measure to penalize local governments attempting to remove or destroy Confederate monuments and other historic memorials.
HB 496 by Sen. Stan McClain, an Ocala Republican, demands the state protect “each historic Florida monument or memorial from removal, damage, or destruction.” It’s the fourth time this bill has been introduced in successive legislative sessions as part of a broader conservative response to the nationwide movement to down or rename Confederate statues.
“The Legislature finds that an accurate and factual history belongs to all Floridians and future generations and that the state has an obligation to protect and preserve such history,” the bill reads.
Local government officials who try to take down the monuments would be fined up to $1,000, and could open themselves to lawsuits by either the group that helped maintain or erect the memorial or any Floridian who regularly uses it for “remembrance purposes.” A court could award the suing party damages up to $100,000.
The push to remove Confederate images emerged in 2015, after white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine Black people in the Mother Emanuel AME Church a in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof had posed multiple times with a Confederate battle flag leading up to the mass shooting. From 2015 to 2018, roughly 110 Confederate memorials were removed nationwide. In addition, the state stopped flying the Confederate flag over the State House.
Hillsborough County was one of the first local governments in Florida to act following that incident, with the county commission voting later that summer to remove a Confederate flag that had hung in its county center, the Phoenix previously reported.
The Florida Legislature voted in 2016 to remove a statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith that represented Florida in the U.S. Capitol, and again in 2018 to replace it with a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune, known for starting a private college for African American students in Daytona Beach that would become Bethune-Cookman College.
The removal push was reinvigorated in 2020 after George Floyd, a Black man, was killed by a white police officer; nationally, 168 monuments were nixed that year alone, which eventually sparked the counter-movement to keep the statues seen in Florida.
In 2023, Florida Republicans first attempted to pass the measure to ban historic monuments being removed, damaged, or destroyed. Similar measures were introduced in the 2024 and 2025 sessions, but each failed before reaching either the House or Senate floors. As of 2024, Florida still had 73 of these monuments existing statewide.
Sen. McClain’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The 2026 session begins on Jan. 13.
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