Article Text
Virginia drivers will no longer be able to obtain or renew specialty license plates honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee or the Sons of Confederate Veterans beginning July 1.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed House Bill 1344 on Monday, April 6. The legislation, introduced by Fairfax Del. Dan Helmer, ends the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles’ authority to issue the two Confederate-affiliated plates.
“The Confederacy was a four year period in which traitors hellbent on preserving slavery tried — and then failed — to divide the Union,” Helmer said. “The Confederacy and its leaders do not deserve our commemoration, and its adherents certainly do not deserve taxpayer dollars.”
Part of the revenue generated by both plates goes to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Helmer described the group as a neo-Confederate organization that advances hate speech, white supremacy and the discredited “Lost Cause” interpretation of the Civil War.
Founded in Richmond in 1896, the Sons of Confederate Veterans is open to male descendants of Confederate soldiers. Its website says Southern states fought to preserve “liberty and freedom,” without mentioning their stated opposition to abolishing slavery. The organization’s Virginia division says it rejects racism and denounces the use of Confederate imagery as a symbol of hatred or white supremacy.
Virginia lawmakers authorized a Sons of Confederate Veterans specialty plate in 1999, with four delegates and eight senators opposing the final legislation. A Robert E. Lee commemorative plate followed in 2007, passing unanimously in the Senate and with one House abstention.
Resistance to public commemoration of Lee and the Confederacy has grown in the years since. Virginia eliminated Lee-Jackson Day as a state holiday in 2020 and replaced it with Election Day. The state removed a 130-year-old Lee statue from Richmond in 2021.
Fairfax County also removed the names of Lee and Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson from Routes 29 and 50 in 2022 after reviewing Confederate-linked landmarks for a year. Robert E. Lee High School in Springfield was renamed in 2020 for the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis.
The DMV had already altered the Sons of Confederate Veterans plate in 2015, removing the Confederate flag after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that specialty plates constitute government speech. That decision came in a case challenging Texas’ rejection of a proposed plate featuring the flag.
Prince William Del. Candi Mundon King, now Spanberger’s secretary of the commonwealth, previously made several attempts to eliminate Virginia’s Confederate-related plates. Her 2023 proposal banning references to the Confederacy “or persons who committed treason” did not receive a vote. A 2024 measure containing the same language as Helmer’s bill cleared the General Assembly but was vetoed by then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Drivers who still have valid Robert E. Lee or Sons of Confederate Veterans plates may keep them until they expire. The DMV will not renew them after the law takes effect.
Virginia charges an additional $10 annually for personalized plates. As of Feb. 27, 2024, the DMV had issued approximately 2,300 plates connected to Lee and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.