President Joe Biden is expected to sign a bill ordering that a marble bust of the late Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored a pro-slavery Supreme Court opinion that helped to precipitate the Civil War, be removed from the U.S. Capitol building.
The removal of the Taney bust is part of the push to remove Confederate statues and displays honoring historical figures deemed to be champions of white supremacy from public spaces after the May 2020 death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd sparked public revulsion and protests.
Almost 100 Confederate monuments were taken down across the country that year, according to one count, and more have since been removed from public display. A statue of Taney was removed from the Maryland General Assembly grounds in Annapolis in 2017 after Republican Gov. Larry Hogan endorsed the move.
Taney (pronounced tah-nee), the nation’s fifth chief justice, presided over the high court and oversaw the federal judiciary from 1836 until 1864. He served in the General Assembly and was attorney general of Maryland. Later he was U.S. attorney general and then U.S. treasury secretary before becoming chief justice under President Andrew Jackson.
The bill, S.5229, sponsored by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), requires congressional administrators to remove the sculpture of Maryland-born Taney, who lived from 1777 to 1864, and replace it with a bust of Maryland-born Thurgood Marshall, who lived from 1908 to 1993.
The measure mandates that Taney’s likeness, currently situated in the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol where the Supreme Court met from 1810 to 1860, be removed within 45 days of the law coming into force.
Marshall, a trailblazing liberal jurist who was the first black American appointed to the Supreme Court, served as an associate justice from 1967 to 1991. While practicing as an attorney, Marshall successfully argued Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), in which the high court held that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. He later joined the staff of the NAACP.
The legislation received final congressional approval Dec. 14 when the House of Representatives passed the measure on a voice vote.
An aide to Cardin told The Epoch Times on Dec. 19 that it wasn’t clear when Biden would sign the bill into law.
The Epoch Times reached out to the White House for comment but had not received a reply as of press time.
“Thurgood Marshall was an inspiration who helped tear down the walls of segregation in America. It is wholly appropriate that such a civil rights and legal icon displace Roger Taney in the U.S. Capitol,” Cardin said in a statement provided by his Senate office.
“Both hailed from Maryland, but Marshall was a beacon of hope for racial equality. His uplifting voice of equality and opportunity is exactly what our nation needs at this moment,” Cardin said.
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) lauded the legislation when it passed.
“I support removing the bust of Taney and believe statues like his only divide us as a nation,” Davis said.
The bill explains why supporters believe Taney’s likeness needs to be excised from the halls of Congress.
“While the removal of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s bust from the Capitol does not relieve the Congress of the historical wrongs it committed to protect the institution of slavery, it expresses Congress’s recognition of one of the most notorious wrongs to have ever taken place in one of its rooms, that of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s Dred Scott v. Sandford decision.”
Scott was a slave who at one point lived in a state and territory where slavery was prohibited. He sued to obtain his freedom and the Supreme Court ruled against him on a vote of 7 to 2. The decision, authored by Taney in 1857, held that blacks were not and could never become U.S. citizens and could not sue in federal courts. It also held that Congress lacked the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′. The decision greatly contributed to sectional tensions.
The decision was later undone when the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution were adopted.
