Attorneys for slave descendants urge judge not to throw out their lawsuit
Attorneys suing a Georgia county over zoning changes that they say threaten one of the South's last GullahGeechee communities of Black slave descendants asked a judge Tuesday to let them correct technical problems with their civil complaint to avoid having it dismissed.
A lawyer for coastal McIntosh County argued the judge must throw out the lawsuit because it clashes with a 2020 amendment to Georgia's state constitution dealing with legal immunity granted to state and local governments.
Residents of the tiny Hogg Hummock community sued in October after county commissioners voted to weaken zoning restrictions that for decades helped protect the enclave of modest homes along dirt roads on largely unspoiled Sapelo Island.
The zoning changes doubled the size of houses allowed in Hogg Hummock. Black residents say larger homes in the community will lead to property tax increases that they won't be able to afford. Their lawsuit asks a judge to declare the new law discriminates “on the basis of race, and that it is therefore unconstitutional, null, and void.”
The legal arguments Superior Court Judge Jay Stewart heard Tuesday didn't touch on the merits of the case. Instead, they dealt purely with technical flaws in the lawsuit filed by attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center and whether those problems warrant a complete dismissal.
Georgia voters in 2020 amended the state constitution to weaken the broad immunity from lawsuits granted to the state and local governments. While the amendment enabled citizens to sue Georgia governments for illegal acts, it also stated that such lawsuits could no longer list individual government officers as defendants.
The lawsuit filed on behalf of the Hogg Hummock residents not only names McIntosh County as a defendant, but also its five individual commissioners.