The North Carolina Senate’s top leader is skeptical about scrapping a 2015 law that prohibits permanently removing Confederate monuments from public property, as Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper called for earlier this week.

Republican Senate leader Phil Berger wrote in a column released Thursday that “an impulsive decision” to pull down monuments wouldn’t be wise. Berger says the legislation sought to reduce politics in decisions about monuments on government property.

The law was passed after the Confederate flag over the South Carolina statehouse was removed following the race-based slayings of nine people at a Charleston church.

Cooper said the Civil War’s important history belongs in textbooks and museums. He says the monuments should come down following last weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Demonstrators toppled a Confederate monument in Durham on Monday.