NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — The city of Norfolk, Virginia, is claiming in a lawsuit that its free speech rights are being violated because a state law won’t let it remove an 80-foot Confederate monument from its downtown.

Norfolk’s lawsuit employs a relatively novel and untested legal strategy in the federal court system for trying to remove a Confederate monument, legal experts say. The main legal question in this case is whether cities have free speech rights.

The city filed suit Monday in a U.S. District Court in Norfolk and targets a Virginia law that prevents the removal of war memorials. The suit claims infringement of the First Amendment because the city is being forced to project a message it no longer supports.

“The purpose of this suit is to unbuckle the straitjacket that the commonwealth has placed the city and the city council in,” Norfolk argues in its complaint. “Because the monument is the city’s speech, the city has a constitutional right to alter that speech, a right that the Commonwealth cannot take away.”

Norfolk owns the monument, which includes a statue of a Confederate soldier nicknamed “Johnny Reb” as well as the seal of the former Confederacy.