Pittsburgh argues that Italian-American group has no right to challenge Columbus statue removal

Attorneys for the City of Pittsburgh said that a lawsuit filed against it last year to save the Christopher Columbus statue at Schenley Park ought to be dismissed because the organization that filed it doesn’t have standing.

In documents filed last week in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, the city said the group suing it, the Italian Sons and Daughters of America, are not the original donors of the statue. And while acknowledging that the group says it is based on Downtown’s Wood Street, the city portrayed the organization as outsiders, noting it is led by President Basil Russo of Cleveland.

“The residents of this city have asked their government to remove the Columbus statue from Schenley Park,” wrote assistant city solicitor Emily McNally. “It defies reason that outside interests should be permitted to control or influence purely local affairs. The people of Pittsburgh, through their duly elected leadership and use of community forums, should be free to decide how to use Pittsburgh’s public space, and Pittsburghers have spoken.”

In addition to listing a Downtown address for its headquarters, the group’s website said it was founded in 1930 by a community of Italian immigrants in Pittsburgh. Since then, it has merged with several other groups and is one of the largest Italian American organizations in the country. A message left there on Thursday was to be referred to Russo.

The Italian Sons and Daughters of America filed a lawsuit in October 2020 against the City of Pittsburgh to stop it from removing the 13-foot tall bronze and granite statue that has been displayed at Schenley Park since 1958. It was erected by the Sons of Columbus of America three years after the city passed an ordinance giving them permission.

However in the summer of 2020, as similar statues were being reconsidered all over the country, the Pittsburgh Art Commission took on the issue, and on Sept. 23, 2020, voted unanimously to remove it from pubic view.

Mayor Bill Peduto recommended its removal two weeks later, and it was covered by the city on Oct. 12, 2020, and left at the site pending the outcome of legal proceedings.

The Italians Sons and Daughters of America said in their initial complaint that the city’s decision to remove the statue is a violation of the ordinance originally enacted to erect it.

Then, in an amended complaint filed last month, the plaintiffs alleged that Peduto improperly influenced the Art Commission’s vote and there were due process violations. The city denied the allegations.

McNally wrote that allegations the mayor threatened the Art Commission members are false, misleading and defamatory. The amended complaint “dramatically distorts that (email) exchange and relies on such distortion to portray Mayor Peduto in a disparaging light.”

The only purpose for including those claims, the city said, was to tarnish the mayor’s image with the public and the court.

The city also argues that the plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that the group has a direct and substantial interest in the matter.

“The amended complaint simply declares that the (Italians Sons and Daughters) is the de facto successor to the Sons of Columbus of America. This paragraph, which is nothing more than a conclusory statement, is the entirety of the information included in the amended complaint regarding plaintiff’s connection to the 1955 legislation at issue,” McNally wrote.

The group shows no proof of any connection — nothing that shows overlap in leadership or membership or anything that suggests the Italian Sons and Daughters were involved in fundraising or construction of the statue, she said.

Further, the city wrote, the plaintiff’s website says that it has been in existence since 1930, which means it was operational long before the statue was gifted to the city.

“It does not make sense that an organization that preexisted the statue could be deemed a successor to a separate and distinct organization that was responsible for the statue’s construction,” McNally wrote.

Just because the Italian Sons and Daughters of America is “aggrieved,” the city wrote, that is not enough to give the group standing.

The city also said in its filing that the plaintiff has failed to show how relocating the statue from public to private land would cause harm or impair their mission, or how their organization’s interest supersedes that of the municipality.

“(D)espite overwhelming requests from Pittsburgh residents that their tax dollars no longer support the continued public display of Christopher Columbus, Mr. Russo and his Philadelphia attorneys have appropriated Pittsburghers’ local Court of Common Pleas and Pittsburghers’ local government resources to force an agenda that is of no benefit to Pittsburghers,” McNally wrote.