Judge Kevin Newsom (left), Judge Beverly Martin and Judge Diarmid O'Scannlain.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit just made it harder for Confederate heritage groups to stop the removal of monuments from public venues.

On Monday, the Eleventh Circuit stripped Southern heritage groups and sympathizers of the right to sue in federal court over the relocation of a 26-foot-tall Confederate memorial in Lakeland, Florida. The memorial was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1908.

To have standing to sue, "A plaintiff must demonstrate among other things that he or she has suffered an invasion of a legally protected interest that is both … 'concrete and particularized,'" Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom wrote for a panel that included Beverly Martin and Senior Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District.

But injuries asserted by the plaintiffs—among them Southern War Cry, Save Southern Heritage, Veterans Monuments of America, members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy and a taxpayer who claimed "Confederate dead in his family lineage"—don't qualify, Newsom said.

Mark Nelson Miller and Kristie Hatcher-Bolin of GrayRobinson in Lakeland represented Lakeland officials on appeal. Hatcher-Bolin declined to comment on Monday's opinion. Attorney David Rhodes McCallister of Wesley Chapel, Florida, who represented the plaintiffs, couldn't be reached for comment.

The Eleventh Circuit handed down its ruling as weeks of demonstrations following the asphyxiation of Minneapolis resident George Floyd by city police have generated a renewed drive to take down or relocate dozens of Confederate monuments and to rename U.S. military bases honoring Confederate generals.

DeKalb County complied with a court order to take down a 30-foot-tall obelisk in front of its courthouse last week erected the same year as the Lakeland monument.

Over the weekend, demonstrators in Washington, D.C., pulled down a statue of Confederate General Albert Pike, wrenched two bronze statues of Confederate soldiers from a 75-foot tall Confederate monument at the state capitol in Raleigh, N.C. Statues of slaveholders, including George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and Francis Scott Key, author of "The Star-Spangled Banner," were also toppled.

While the debate over the removal of Confederate statutes has created a political rift in communities across the nation, Monday's unanimous opinion crossed the political spectrum. Newsom was nominated by President Donald Trump, and Martin and O'Scannlain were nominated by Presidents Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan, respectively.

Lakeland's memorial cenotaph—an empty tomb engraved with images of the Confederate battle flag and the words "Confederate Dead"—was moved from the city's Munn Park to Veterans Park outside Lakeland's historic district using funds from private donations and fees generated by the city's red light camera program.

A district court judge in Florida dismissed the case with prejudice, and the city relocated the monument while the case was on appeal after the plaintiffs failed to ask for a stay. The Eleventh Circuit vacated and remanded the ruling with instructions that the district court should dismiss it without prejudice for lack of jurisdiction.

"The plaintiffs assert that the monument's relocation infringes their interests in 'preserv[ing] the history of the south,' 'expressing their free speech from a Southern perspective,' 'vindicat[ing] the cause' for which the Confederate Veteran fought," and 'protect[ing] and preserv[ing] memorials to American veterans,'" Newsom wrote. " But those injuries … are pretty amorphous."

"Aside from their 'special interest' in the subject[s] of Confederate history, veterans memorials, and the so-called 'Southern perspective,' the plaintiffs haven't shown that they have suffered a particularized Article III injury of the sort that distinguishes them from other interested observers and thus qualifies them, specifically, to invoke federal-court jurisdiction," he said.