In 2012, the Ku Klux Klan, the United State’s most notorious white supremacy group, took a brief break from spreading hate to write and send an application to sponsor a one-mile section of Route 515 in the Appalachian Mountains.
Some, naturally, were very angry at this possibility. If the KKK sponsored a highway, this would give them permission to erect signs advertising their work. Civil rights leaders have asked the Georgia Department of Transportation to deny the group permission.
However, litigation in a similar case favors the KKK’s position. In 2005, the Missouri Department of Transportation lost a case in the U.S. Supreme Court after denying a high-way adoption application from another KKK chapter.
The KKK successfully argued that the First Amendment barred the Department of Transportation from denying an application because it disagreed with an organization’s political agenda.
However, immediately after the highway was adopted, the DOT renamed the road after civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Will Georgia try a similar tongue-in-cheek approach?