The House passed a bill Wednesday that would remove from public display at the U.S. Capitol a statue of Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which defended slavery and denied the citizenship of Black Americans.
Roger B. Taney (1777-1864), chief justice of the Supreme Court.
The measure directs the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library to remove Taney's bust, which sits inside the entrance to the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol, and replace it with a bust of Thurgood Marshall, the court’s first Black justice.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Rep. David Trone, both D-Md., introduced the legislation in March 2020.
The House overwhelmingly passed it a few months later in a 305-113 vote, but it did not advance in the Senate.
A statue of Taney, who lived in Maryland, was removed from Maryland's State House grounds in 2017.
Congress in recent years has taken similar action to remove other statues from the Civil War era. »