A construction firm hired by the city of New Orleans to uproot four monuments to Confederate leaders has quit after receiving “death threats.”

The city council voted in December voted to remove the monuments, including a 131-year-old statue of Robert E. Lee, after claiming they violated the city’s “public nuisance” ordinance.

“We, the people of New Orleans, have the power and we have the right to correct these historical wrongs,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at the time, the New York Times reported.

The city hired H&O Investments LLC of Baton Rouge to remove the monuments. According to Talking Points Memo, that company backed out “after its office received death threats, the owner’s wife was threatened over the phone, and it became apparent its contracts with other businesses were at risk.”

A “white supremacist” group has filed suit seeking to stop the monuments’ removal.

“Attorneys for the groups argued that moving the statues could damage them and therefore they should remain where they were until the case plays out to avoid having to move them twice,” according to The Advocate.

The plaintiffs claim the removal of the monuments violates their First Amendment right to free expression, “which they exercise by maintaining and preserving the historic character and nature of the city of New Orleans, including their monuments,” the ABA Journal reports.

They also say the city’s action is a violation of equal protection because they say they were treated differently than monument opponents.

“The city’s effort to move the four monuments appears to have originated with the musician Wynton Marsalis, whose opinion has inexplicably been afforded more weight than that of the residents of New Orleans,” according to the suit.

“The defendants intentionally treated plaintiffs, and persons opposed to removal of the four monuments, differently from other similarly situated individuals, and there is no justification for the difference in treatment.”

The New Orleans monuments certainly aren’t the only ones under scrutiny.

In July, a group of Memphis, Tennessee activists gathered at the grave site of Nathan Bedford Forrest and threatened to dig it up.

“We are going to bring the back hoe, the tractors and the men with the equipment to raise Bedford Forrest from the soil of Memphis,” Isaac Richmond with the “Commission on Religion and Racism” declared to awaiting TV cameras, CBS 3 reported.

“If he’s gone, some of this racism and race-hate might be gone,” he said, shovel in hand. “We got a fresh shovel full, and we hope that everybody else will follow suit and dig him up.”