Columbus and His Day

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By Professor Victoria Sutton

October 12, 2025

Guest Opinion. As Columbus Day approaches, having now been proclaimed by President Donald Trump in an Executive Order for the Monday national holiday. It is a change from the alternatively proclaimed Indigenous Peoples Day since 2021. President Biden was the first President to proclaim Indigenous Peoples' Day, as a national holiday.

Columbus Day was first declared a national holiday in 1934. Before the digital information explosion and before the internet, when information could only be found in a local library encyclopedia or whatever was deemed interesting in a magazine or newspaper. Now that more information is available and research much more widely shared, a dark side of Columbus has emerged, and sentiments have shifted about his honorific Day as well as statues of Columbus in public parks.

While Columbus is best known for his “discovery” of America (never mind Scandinavians were here and “discovered” America around 1000 A.D., 500 years before Columbus), more documentation of his cruelty and enslavement of Native people has come to light. His directive from the Catholic Church was to Christianize Indians. However, there is some evidence he did not enslave those who professed to have converted to Christianity. (I tend to believe this since the last surviving phrase of language in the Lumbee Tribe means something like, “I am a Christian Indian,” a good defense to being enslaved.) Newly discovered reports include complaints about his cruelty to Indigenous peoples and others that got him called back to Europe, after an investigation by Admiral Francisco de Bobadilla sent by Spain. Columbus was arrested and sent back in chains to Spain.

So it is not surprising that conflict exists around the naming and renaming of the holiday. Nothing like a review of that litigation to celebrate the holiday so here are a few cases that challenge the authority of cities to eliminate Columbus Day, and the removal of statues depicting Columbus.

Eliminating Columbus Day—who decides?
Given Columbus Day has existed since 1934, there are plenty of traditions especially among Italian societies (never mind there is disagreement about whether he is Italian, Spanish, Sephardic Jewish or Portuguese).

City of Philadelphia
In Philadelphia, several Italian organizations sued the city for eliminating Columbus Day and replacing it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

In Conf. of Presidents of Major Italian Am. Orgs., Inc. v. City of Philadelphia, in 2025, at issue were two proclaimed holidays: Juneteenth and Indigenous Peoples Day. The court considered the complaints that the Mayor had unilaterally proclaimed the holiday, an act reserved by the city’s charter for legislative power, only. The court distinguished the two actions:

By contrast, that portion of Executive Order 2-21 designating Juneteenth as a City holiday merely recites the fact that it already had been designated a holiday across the Commonwealth and directs that it be recognized as a holiday “for all City employees.” . . . These reflect two different acts of the Mayor: one administrative and presumably valid, and one legislative and unauthorized by the Charter.

Thus, and in sum, because it is a form of lawmaking, that portion of Executive Order 2-21 eliminating Columbus Day and replacing it with Indigenous Peoples’ Day contravenes the Charter’s express reservation to Council of all legislative power in the City. It therefore runs afoul of the separation of powers inherent in the Charter and, accordingly, is invalid. On this ground, we must reverse the trial court’s order.

City of Boston
Meanwhile, a few months earlier, the City of Boston is challenged by the North End Chamber of Commerce for eliminating Columbus Day, and restricting sidewalk service for restaurants, in a largely Italian district. In a novel theory, the plaintiffs claimed the treatment of the restaurants was therefore discriminatory toward Italians and therefore a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. (They had made the same claim in 2023.) The court found there was no evidence of a discriminatory manner and that the City had a legitimate governmental interest in their disparate treatment of the North End.

The court explained the plaintiffs' claim of discrimination:

Plaintiffs also fail to allege legislative or administrative history that would support a claim of discriminatory intent. Plaintiffs offer no facts supporting the inference that the City imposed the challenged regulations because many restaurants in the North End serve Italian food or are owned by those of Italian heritage or white people. A joke, perhaps about white people, made by the Mayor at the St. Patrick’s Day breakfast hardly suggests animus against Italian Americans. Similarly, the designation of Indigenous People’s Day is not evidence of animus.

The government does not violate the Equal Protection Clause every time it affirms or celebrates an ethnicity. Otherwise, Columbus Day itself would arguably have been an Equal Protection violation—but of course it wasn’t. Under Plaintiffs’ theory, every national or ethnic group in [the city]—Asians, Scandinavians, Arabs, Pacific Islanders, and so on—could assert claims against [the mayor] and the city for declaring a holiday celebrating a nationality or ethnicity different than theirs.

The plaintiffs also had a procedural due process claim which requires a deprivation of a property interest, for example, in on-street dining licenses. The court found they had no such property interest.

The plaintiffs also had a substantive due process claim, requiring action that would “shock the conscience” so they failed on that claim as well.

Taking down Columbus Statues - who decides?
In June 2022, the Mayor of Philadelphia directed the City’s Public Art Director to “initiate as soon as possible the public process . . . for the possible removal of the statue located at Marconi Plaza on South Broad Street.”

His letter read as follows:

Christopher Columbus, like many historical figures, has supporters and detractors. For centuries, he has been venerated with the stories of his traversing the Atlantic and “discovering” the “New World.” However, his history is much more infamous. Mistakenly believing he had found a new route to India, Columbus enslaved indigenous people, and punished individuals who failed to meet his expected service by severing limbs, or in some cases, murder. Surely the totality of this history must be accounted for when considering whether to erect or maintain a monument to this person.

I believe that a public process allowing for all viewpoints, especially those of indigenous people whose ancestors suffered under the rule of European settlers, to be in the best interest of the City.

The removal of public art is governed by a 1998 directive, “Policy on the Donation, Placement and Removal of Public Art” entitled “Managing Director’s Directive 67” (Directive 67). In the case of removal of public art the directive requires no “no less than 90 days shall be provided for public input on the matter.”

The statue was removed in less than 90 days without the required 90 day comment period and so the court found for the plaintiffs.

Meanwhile in the City of New Haven, at roughly the same time in June 2022, the American Italian Women for a Greater New Haven filed suit against the City of New Haven for removing the statue of Christopher Columbus from Wooster Square Park in 2020. The statue was a gift from Italian immigrants to the City of New Haven in 1892, and it was erected in Wooster Square Park. The plaintiff is an Italian-American organization that holds an annual wreath-laying ceremony at the statue.

The plaintiffs allege the removal is discriminatory against Italians; violating the Equal Protection Clause; and the Due Process Clause for violation of due process; and removing the statue is a violation of Free Speech. The court found against the plaintiffs on all three of these legal questions: holding that there was no basis for the discrimination and Equal Protection Clause violation; that there was no property interest that is required for a procedural due process claim; and removal of the statue is government speech and therefore not protected speech.

But in both the City of Philadelphia and City of New Haven statue-removing cases, the courts found both organizations had standing to stay in court and maintain a claim. In the New Haven case, the court held the plaintiff had standing based on the allegation that the removal of the statue impaired its ability to conduct its annual wreath-laying ceremony at that location. In the case, In re Friends of Marconi Plaza & Rich Cedrone (2022) against the City of Philadelphia, the court also found standing because Rich Cedrone and friends lived just a few blocks away and held an annual ceremony around that statue.

Although the court found against the parties in the City of New Haven case, they gave them a dismissal without prejudice and 21 days to amend their complaint.

Native Statue Desecration on the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo Reservation
In 2022, a non-Indian who made later claims he was Indian, defaced a months-old statute erected by the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo people on their traditional lands in El Paso County, Texas. The facts are documented in the court’s opinion as follows:

According to the stipulated facts, on Columbus Day in 2017, Haggerty poured red paint on a statue of Nestora Piarote, an Indigenous woman, and placed a wooden cross in front of it. The statue was located in El Paso County, Texas, on land reserved to the Ysleta Del Sur Indian Tribe (also known as the Tigua Indian Tribe). The tribe erected the statue to honor the women of their tribe and had unveiled it just three months earlier. It cost $92,000. Law enforcement arrested Haggerty after linking him to the purchase of the wood and paint used in the crime. In addition, in the months preceding the crime, Haggerty had reposted or liked social media posts: (1) expressing concern that a statue of Christopher Columbus would be removed from Columbus Circle in New York City; (2) urging Catholics to unite to defend Columbus Day from being replaced by a “pagan” Indigenous Peoples’ Day; and (3) stating that Catholic history was being erased.

Although the factual stipulation described Haggerty as physically appearing to be a “white male” based on surveillance footage, neither the stipulation nor the indictment described whether Haggerty was Indian or non-Indian. Haggerty tried to raise that he was an “Indian” for purposes of the criminal statute, he was estopped because he did not raise it as an affirmative defense at the trial level.

The criminal statute provides for prosecution of the defendant in a federal court if they are non-Indian; and in the tribal court if they are a member of that Tribe, and sometimes if they are an Indian of another Tribe.

Haggerty was found guilty of malicious injury of property located on “Indian country” in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1152 and 1363. His sentence was a 12 months and one day prison term, followed by three years of supervised release. His conviction was affirmed on appeal.

And so . . .

In general, it usually takes legislative action in a city to declare a holiday or to rescind one; and removing public art, even controversial art, must follow the regulatory processes. It is also true that historic figures are typically a mixed bag of good and bad, and it is important not be oblivious about any of it. The bottom line is that Columbus Day or not, Indigenous people have never needed the federal government to tell them who they are or when or how to celebrate their survival.

To read more articles by Professor Sutton go to: https://profvictoria.substack.com/ 

Professor Victoria Sutton (Lumbee) is Director of the Center for Biodefense, Law & Public Policy and an Associated Faculty Member of The Military Law Center of Texas Tech University School of Law.