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While some communities around the country are removing Confederate monuments, Lake County is defending in court its decision to accept a statue of Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith.

The County Commission is asking a judge to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its vote last July to welcome the Confederate statue.

It’s being replaced at the U.S. Capitol by a sculpture of Mary McLeod Bethune and will have a new home at the nonprofit Lake County Historical Museum in Tavares.

The lawsuit by Lake County Voices of Reason claims the commission violated the Sunshine Law by meeting privately one-on-one with the curator of the museum.

Then, citing the commissioners’ approval, the curator convinced a panel to let the museum take the statue.

In a motion to dismiss filed on Friday, the county says the community group is misrepresenting the Sunshine Law and that meetings with individual commissioners do not violate it.

The county argues there is no evidence of a decision reached in private before the public meeting.