Justices turn away Missouri's attempt to ban Klan from cleanup program

By The Associated Press

03.06.01

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WASHINGTON — Missouri lost a Supreme Court bid yesterday to ban the Ku Klux Klan from its Adopt-A-Highway cleanup program.

The court, without comment, refused to hear Yarnell v. Cuffley, turning down the state's argument that it should be allowed to bar the Klan from the litter control program because the organization won't accept blacks and other minorities as members.

Jeff Briggs, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Transportation, which administers the highway cleanup program, said officials were reviewing the court action.

Thomas Robb, national director of the Klan in Harrison, Ark., said, "It's what I expected right from the beginning. With us it was purely a constitutional issue."

According to today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch, state transportation officials say they are not going to repost the Adopt-A-Highway signs acknowledging the Klan's participation, and Klan officials say they will abandon the stretch of highway at the center of the suit because the person who filed the original application is no longer taking part in the program. The newspaper reports that the Klan plans to adopt another stretch of highway in the state.

Missouri's lawyers had said the state has a right to control its own speech and that allowing the Klan to participate would violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act's ban on racial discrimination in federally funded programs.

A lower court said Missouri must allow the Klan to join the litter cleanup program, adding that the state unconstitutionally turned down the organization because of its views.

The Constitution's free-speech guarantee "protects everyone, even those with viewpoints as thoroughly obnoxious as those of the Klan," said a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Signs went up in November 1999 designating a one-mile stretch of Interstate 55 south of St. Louis as having been adopted by the Klan. But vandals destroyed the signs, and state officials refused to replace them, saying they posed a potential safety threat.

As in most states, Missouri's program allows groups to "adopt" a stretch of highway and do cleanup work on it. The state saves money, and the groups' efforts are acknowledged on signs posted along the highway.

Missouri's lawyers said nine other states have rejected Klan requests to join their Adopt-A-Highway programs: West Virginia, Texas, Ohio, Maryland, Kansas, Georgia, California, Arkansas and Alabama.

The Klan asked to join the Missouri program in 1994. The state denied the application, citing the Klan's all-white membership policy and its "history of unlawful violence."

The Klan sued and won in lower courts. The 8th Circuit panel said in March 2000 the state would not violate the federal civil rights law by letting the Klan adopt a stretch of highway.

In the appeal acted on yesterday, Missouri's lawyers said the Constitution's free-speech guarantee protects the state from having to post signs "suggesting that the state approves of, and is grateful for, the Klan's participation" in the program.

The Klan's lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union said the First Amendment protects the organization "against those who would misuse government power to suppress political dissidents."

The Justice Department, asked by the court to give its views on the case, urged the justices to address the Civil Rights Act issue. The 8th Circuit panel's ruling "could substantially undermine" enforcement of the anti-discrimination law, government lawyers said.

Twenty-seven states filed a brief supporting Missouri. They said they did not want to be "forced to validate the Klan through the erection of highway signs announcing its presence as a partner of government."

Update

KKK's quest to clean Missouri highway again heads to court
Klan wants to adopt stretch of Highway 21; earlier this year, state kicked group out of program because it wasn’t picking up trash along part of Interstate 55.  07.20.01

Related

S.D. governor: Gay group may join road cleanup program
But all signs identifying participants in Adopt-A-Highway program are to come down by the end of the year.  08.21.01