Attorneys for Atlanta asked a federal appeals court to overturn a lower court’s decision allowing nonresidents of the city to sign a petition as part of the effort to put “Stop Cop City,” a movement to block the proposed training center for police and firefighters, on the ballot.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on Thursday from lawyers for the city of Atlanta and attorneys for four residents of nearby DeKalb County, located miles from the proposed site.
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In an effort to place the $90 million facility’s construction on the ballot this fall, members of the Stop Cop City movement began collecting signatures to force a ballot referendum, hoping to stop the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center from being built. The facility would be one of the biggest militarized police training centers in the country if built.
Atlanta law allows for a 60-day period for collecting the signatures, and those who are witnessing the signing have to be registered city voters. However, this summer, four residents of DeKalb County sued for their right to collect signatures, and a district judge temporarily removed the requirement that only let city residents collect signatures for a referendum petition, extending the deadline to 95 days.
“There’s no doubt the First Amendment violation as it stood frustrated the signature collection efforts,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Jeffrey Filipovits of Spears & Filipovits said, arguing the residency requirement was rightfully overturned by U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen because it violated the residents’ First Amendment.
“It required people to work in teams and took resources away from city residents,” Filipovits said, per Courthouse News Service.
The city is trying to disqualify the signatures collected after the original 60-day deadline, which fell on Aug. 21. Organizers claimed to have gathered 116,000 signatures of Atlanta residents, reaching the threshold to place the question on the ballot, which requires 15%, or a little over 58,000 names of Atlanta registered voters to have signed.
“The city of Atlanta has not said anyone may not circulate a petition asking the city to revisit its decision to build the training center,” city attorney Robert Ashe of Bondurant Mixson & Elmore said, arguing the lower court’s decision should be overturned because the plaintiffs have not undergone any legal trouble that would warrant Cohen’s decision.
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“What they’ve said is if the specific petition you use does not contain this residency attestation then it will not count to trigger the specific process you’re trying to trigger,” Ashe said, according to Courthouse News Service.
An analysis done by the Associated Press, Georgia Public Broadcasting, WABE, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution looked at all 25,000-plus pages of signatures and found only about 108,500. While it’s still possible to reach the threshold without those several thousand, the legality behind the signatures could also come into play, depending on the court’s decision.
