NEW ORLEANS- An opponent to the removal of prominent Confederate monuments in New Orleans gets a chance to make his case in state court.
    
Pierre McGraw, president of the Monumental Task Committee Inc., filed a lawsuit in late January to stop the removal. His group maintains the monuments and he argues that he has a legal stake in their fate because he's spent so much money preserving them.
    
A Civil District Court hearing is set to take place Friday morning before Judge Piper D. Griffin.
    
A similar challenge was shot down in federal court a day before the lawsuit was filed.
    
In December, the City Council voted 6-1 to remove four monuments tied to Confederate history because they were deemed a nuisance for fostering white supremacist ideologies.