A North Georgia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan wants to force the Georgia Department of Transportation to allow members to pick up trash along a mile-long stretch of highway as part of the Adopt A Highway program and then post a sign crediting them with their work
But first the Georgia Supreme Court must decide if the law allows them to sue and whether posting a sign that says, in effect. the International Keystone Knights of the KKK is an environmentally-conscious organizations.
The issue over whether a Klan chapter can participate in the popular Adopt A Highway program, which brings with it a state sign crediting the group, was first raised in 2012 and is now in the hands of the Georgia Supreme Court. But most of the argument Monday afternoon concerned legal issues such as whether the state can be sued and whether the lawsuit filed in Fulton Superior Court was cast in the proper form to get it before the justices, not the core concern about any rights the Klan might have to participate.
Alan Begner, the attorney for the Klan, said the Georgia Department of Transportation violated the group’s free speech protections when it turned down its application to join the Adopt A Highway program by cleaning up a one-mile stretch of a Union County highway in northeast Georgia.
April and Harley Hanson, who calls himself the grand cyclops of the Klan chapter, applied to adopt a stretch of State Route 515 near the North Carolina line. Local officials gave the Hansons reflective vests and trash bags, implying that their application had been approved, but then GDOT wrote them a letter, saying the Klan group's application was denied because the KKK's "long-rooted history of civil disturbance" presented the "potential for civil unrest."
It was the first time since the Adopt A Highway program was created in 1989 that an application to participate in the program was denied, according to Begner.
The Klan chapter sued and won before a Fulton County judge on the question of whether it could sue on the bases that its constitutionally-protect free speech rights. The state appealed saying the signs were "government speech" and not an individual's message.
The signs are universal, according to Assistant Attorney General Brittany Bolton. They look the same. Each one includes words and images identifying it as a state sign. Only the name of the sponsor is different.
Begner said he couldn’t understand how posting the name of the group — International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — was any different from state signs posted on exit ramps directing drivers to various restaurants, gas stations or motels.
“We have no message (on the signs). Just a name,” Begner said after the arguments.
But the state’s lawyers also argued that the Klan could not even bring a lawsuit against the state without first getting permission to sue from the Legislature because of “sovereign immunity,” a legal doctrine first established to protect the king from lawsuits.
It could be several months before the court rules.
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