As other states begin to tear down symbols of the Confederacy, Georgia may soon be forced to hoist a sign bearing the name of the Ku Klux Klan.
The white supremacy group sought in 2012 to receive recognition from the state for cleaning litter from a 1-mile stretch of road near the North Carolina state line. Georgia transportation officials rejected the Klan’s request to join the Adopt-A-Highway Program, and the KKK chapter sued.
Now the Court of Appeals of Georgia will decide whether the state violated the group’s constitutional right to free speech. The state has cited public safety concerns and said the program is aimed at “civic-minded organizations” — not hate groups.
The court will hear oral arguments in the case Thursday.
Nationally, there is precedent on the issue and it doesn’t bode well for Georgia. Missouri blocked a similar request from the Klan in 1997 but lost its fight after a lengthy legal battle on free-speech grounds. Missouri lawmakers tried to get the last laugh. They renamed that stretch of pavement after a rabbi who fled Nazi Germany and became a prominent civil rights advocate in the U.S.
The timing of Georgia’s case, though, presents other problems. The court arguments on Thursday come as lawmakers in South Carolina take the final steps to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the state Capitol, where it has flown for five decades. A racially motivated shooting last month at a historically black church in Charleston, S.C., has sparked renewed calls throughout the South to bring down remnants of the Confederacy.
The Georgia controversy began when several Blairsville residents who identified themselves as members of the International Keystone Knights of the KKK in Union County applied to state officials to adopt a portion of Ga. 515 in the Appalachian Mountains.
Georgia’s Adopt-A-Highway Program began in 1989, enlisting volunteers to supplement state cleanup efforts. Each group adopts at least a 1-mile stretch of road, agreeing to remove litter from both sides of the highway at least four times a year for a two-year period.
Harley Hanson, who filed the application, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2012 that the group was simply trying to be civic-minded.
“We just want to clean up the doggone road,” he said. “We’re not going to be out there in robes.”
The state rejected the request, saying that promoting “an organization with a history of inciting civil disturbance and social unrest would present a grave concern.”
With the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, the KKK sued.
In its legal briefs, the ACLU acknowledged the state’s concerns.
“The State’s discomfort with the IKK, historically a symbol of white supremacy, is both understandable and an unconstitutional basis for denying (the application),” it said.
The ACLU said the state has many options to address the problem, “but censorship is not one of them.”
The state argues that the KKK’s free-speech arguments are bunk because the Adopt-A-Highway Program’s signs are produced, issued and installed by the state on state-owned public highways. That makes it impossible to treat the signage as a private expression, state attorneys wrote.
“Erecting an (Adopt-A-Highway) Program sign with the KKK’s name on it would have the effect of erecting a sign announcing that ‘the State of Georgia has declared this area Klan Country,’” its brief read. “Such a statement is absurd and would date this state back decades.”
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