Congress OKs Bill to Remove Bust of Dred Scott Chief Justice

Congress approved legislation to replace a bust at the U.S. Capitol of former Chief Justice Roger Taney, who authored a landmark Supreme Court decision upholding slavery, with one of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice.

The House passed the bill, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., by voice vote Wednesday, a week after the Senate approved the measure. Once the bill is signed into law by President Joe Biden, as expected, a congressional joint committee has 45 days to remove the bust, which will remain in the custody of the Senate curator. The committee then has two years to obtain a bust of Marshall to put in its place.

"Sure, we can't rewrite history, but we can choose who deserves to be honored," Cardin tweeted Wednesday.

Democrats in recent years have been trying to pass legislation aimed at removing statues from the Capitol building of those who backed slavery or the Confederacy. The legislation passed Wednesday said although the removal Taney's bust "does not relieve the Congress of the historical wrongs it committed to protect the institution of slavery, it expresses Congress's recognition of one of the most notorious wrongs to have ever taken place in one of its rooms, that of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney's Dred Scott v. Sandford decision."

Taney, a Democrat from a wealthy slave-holding family in Maryland, was Attorney General under President Andrew Jackson when Jackson appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1835 to replace Chief Justice John Marshall.

Taney, who was chief justice from 1836 to 1864, is most notorious for his majority opinion in the Supreme Court's landmark 7-2 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, which determined the U.S. Constitution did not extend to Blacks of African descent, whether they were free or slaves, and Congress had no authority to ban slavery in U.S. territories.

The decision inflamed tensions between free and slave states and was a spark that led to the Civil War. The Dred Scott decision was rendered moot by the passage of the 13^th Amendment, which abolished slavery.

Taney's bust had been at the entrance to the Old Supreme Court Chamber at the U.S. Capitol, where the court resided from 1800 to 1935. On coat hooks on the wall opposite the bust are the names of Supreme Court justices from 1858 to 1860. Inside the chamber, which is now a museum, are busts of the first four chief justices, John Jay, John Rutledge, Oliver Ellsworth, and John Marshall.

 Thurgood Marshall was a civil rights icon before being appointed to the Supreme Court in 1967 by Lyndon Johnson. Marshall argued before the Supreme Court in the landmark 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education, which held segregated schools to be unconstitutional. He served until his retirement in 1991 and was succeeded by Clarence Thomas. Marshall died in 1993.

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