Federal appeals panel: State can't bar KKK from Adopt-A-Highway program

The Associated Press

04.03.00

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ST. LOUIS — The state transportation department's effort to keep the Ku Klux Klan from participating in a program to pick up trash along the highway is discriminatory, an appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's ruling last week that said it was unconstitutional to keep the Klan out of Missouri's Adopt-A-Highway program.

"The First Amendment protects everyone, even those with viewpoints as thoroughly obnoxious as those of the Klan, from viewpoint-based discrimination by the state," the March 31 ruling said.

Initially, transportation officials had denied the group's request to adopt a stretch of Interstate 55 in south St. Louis. They claimed the Klan's discrimination against people based on their color, religion and national origin should bar the group from the program.

But the appeals panel said in its ruling in Michael Cuffley v. Joe Mickes that "there are better ways of countering the Klan's repellent philosophy than by the state's engaging in viewpoint-based discrimination."

The appeals panel also agreed with a U.S. District Court ruling last October that said that while the state and some of its citizens might oppose the Klan's racially divisive views, forbidding the group from participating in the program would be discriminatory.

"This is an affirmation of every principle I have been fighting for," said Robert Herman, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represented the KKK. "The state is not in the business of rewarding or punishing people for their views," he said.

Missouri Department of Transportation officials had not decided whether they would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Our chief counsel office is reviewing this, and we have to advise the Missouri Transportation Commission," Department of Transportation spokesman Tom Miller said. "We have not made a decision on where to go with this court decision."

Herman said even if the state does seek an appeal, the chances of the high court choosing to review the case are slim.

"I think that the Supreme Court would be unlikely to take this case because the decision of the 8th Circuit is so unequivocal and so much in line with the prevailing case law," Herman said. "A legitimate constitutional question is not presented that would require review by the Supreme Court."

Last November, the Department of Transportation reluctantly allowed the Klan into the litter-control program based on the U.S. District Court ruling. The Klan has been an active participant since its members contacted the department three months ago to pick up trash bags and other clean up material, Miller said.

But the move has not set well with some residents. The pair of brown signs erected along the highway, proclaiming the stretch as having been "adopted" by the Klan, have twice been vandalized. Miller said the signs would be posted again in about two weeks.