A jury has awarded millions of dollars in damages against white nationalist leaders for violence that erupted in Charlottesville.
Charlottesville, Va. – In a mixed verdict, a jury awarded more than $25 million in damages Tuesday against white nationalist leaders for violence that erupted during the 2017 Unite the Right rally. After a nearly monthlong civil trial, a jury in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville deadlocked on two key claims but found the white nationalists liable on four other counts in the lawsuit filed by nine people who suffered physical or emotional injuries during two days of demonstrations. The verdict is a rebuke to the white nationalist movement, particularly for the two dozen individuals and organizations who were accused in a federal lawsuit of orchestrating violence against African Americans, Jews and others in a meticulously planned conspiracy. Lawyers for the plaintiffs invoked a 150-year-old law passed after the Civil War to shield freed slaves from violence and protect their civil rights. Commonly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, the law contains a rarely used provision that allows private citizens to sue other citizens for civil rights violations. Hundreds of white nationalists descended on Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally on Aug.11 and 12,2017, ostensibly to protest city plans to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. During a march on the University of Virginia campus, white nationalists chanted “Jews will not replace us,” surrounded counterprotesters and threw tiki torches at them. The following day, an avowed admirer of Adolf Hitler rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing one woman and injuring dozens more.
