Under a 1904 state law that was amended in 1997 to apply to cities, local governments have the authority to authorize the building of war memorials, but they are forbidden from removing, damaging or defacing them. That power rests with the state government.

The City Council was sued in March 2017 by a group of citizens who said councilors had acted unlawfully when they voted a month earlier to move the Lee statue, even though the statues — which were briefly covered with plastic sheets — were never actually moved. (After the rally, the council voted to also remove the statue of Jackson; the lawsuit was then amended to include both statues.)

Bob Fenwick, a former council member who is named in the case, told a local CBS affiliate on Monday that he remained “very comfortable” with his votes to remove the statues.

“It’s based on a flawed law, so the law doesn’t make much difference; it was a public process, it was a lawful process, so that’s our case,” he said.

The city argued in a court filing in January that the law did not apply to these statues because they were not really war memorials. It said the statues were instead symbols of white dominance erected during the Jim Crow era to promote a romantic vision of the antebellum South.

“The statues were part of a regime of city-sanctioned segregation that denied African-Americans equal access to government and public spaces,” attorneys for the city wrote. “The fact that certain Charlottesville residents are unaware of the statues’ history does not change that history or the messages the statues send.”

In his ruling, Judge Moore said the motive of the people who erected the statues “does not change what they are.”