| A federal judge in Washington has ruled that the U.S. Interior Department was wrong removing the site where the Blair Mountain labor battle happened from the National Register of Historic Places.
The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported Monday that U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton granted a motion for summary judgment sought by groups that challenged a 2009 decision that Blair Mountain should be delisted.
The delisting was made at the urging of a lawyer for a number of coal companies and their lobbyists that owned potential mining property in the area.
Judge Walton says in a 47-page opinion that federal officials didn't verify a list of objecting landowners and failed to act transparently.
According to the ruling, the legal fight traces its roots to the 1921 "armed conflict between coal miners and strikebreakers" during the United Mine Workers efforts to unionize West Virginia's southern coalfields.
See AMERICA'S BLOODY UPRISING: BATTLE OF BLAIR MOUNTAIN - Power And Politics In West Virginia's Coal Fields
THE NEW BATTLE OVER BLAIR MOUNTAIN - Historical Designation Short Lived, Over 100 Miners Died In 1921, Government Ordered Bombs, Gas Dropped
JUDGE RULES AGAINST BLAIR MOUNTAIN HISTORICAL DESIGNATION - Door Open For Mountaintop Removal Of Coal
90 YEARS LATER: BATTLE AT BLAIR MOUNTAIN CONTINUES - Crimes Against West Virginians And Nature
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