Chair Lofgren Remarks on Legislation to Replace Bust of Chief Justice Robert Taney with Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall

Washington, D.C. – Committee on House Administration Chairperson Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) delivered the following remarks on the House Floor today in support of S. 5229, a bill to replace the bust of Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in the Old Supreme Court Chamber with one of the Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall:

“This bill, which passed the Senate by unanimous consent last week, directs the Joint Committee on the Library to remove the bust of Chief Justice Roger Taney which now sits in the Old Supreme Court Chamber, and to add a bust of Justice Thurgood Marshall here in the Capitol Complex.

S.5229 is the Senate’s version of H.R.3005, a bill which, for the second Congress in a row, passed the House in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote.

You know, the United States Capitol is a beacon of democracy, freedom and equality, it’s visited by millions of people each year. What and who we choose to honor in this building should represent our values. Chief Justice Taney, who, in the infamous Dred Scott Decision declared that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States and had no Constitutional rights, he does not meet this standard.

As Senator Charles Sumner said during the 1865 debate on the bill originally authorizing the Taney bust, and I quote Senator Sumner:

‘I speak what cannot be denied when I declare that the opinion of the Chief Justice in the case of Dred Scott was more thoroughly abominable that anything of the kind in the history of courts. Judicial baseness reached its lowest point on that occasion.’

More than 150 years later, those words still ring true.

And who better to add to the Capitol Complex than Justice Thurgood Marshall? Justice Marshall was a pillar of the Civil Rights Movement and a tireless fighter for justice and equality. From his early days as a litigator fighting to end Jim Crow and school segregation, to his appointment as the first African American United States Supreme Court Justice, Justice Marshall is among the most important figures of American history.

Although I’m disappointed that S.5229 does not go as far as the House-passed bill did to rid the Capitol of statues and busts of white supremacists and those who served the Confederacy, we should not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Let’s take this opportunity to rid our Capitol of the bust of a man who does not deserve the honor and add one of a man who unquestionably does.

Now some who may argue that this action is an attempt to erase and forget our history. Nothing could be further from the truth. We must never forget our nation’s shameful periods of slavery, segregation, and racism.

But this is about who we choose to honor. Who we choose to literally put on a pedestal and display as emblematic of our values. 

So, I urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting S.5229 and I reserve the balance of my time.”

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