Georgia's highest court sides with slave descendants fighting to protect threatened island community

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ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia's highest court on Tuesday sided with Black landowners in a fight over zoning changes that weakened long-standing protections for one of the South’s last Gullah-Geechee communities founded by freed slaves.

The state Supreme Court unanimously reversed a lower court ruling that had stopped a referendum to consider repealing a revised zoning ordinance passed by McIntosh County officials two years ago. Residents of Sapelo Island opposed the zoning amendments that doubled the size of homes allowed in a tiny enclave called Hogg Hummock.

Homeowners feared the change would result in one of the nation's most historically and culturally unique Black communities facing unaffordable tax increases. Residents and their supporters last year submitted a petition with more than 2,300 signatures from registered voters seeking a referendum in the coastal county, which lies 60 miles (96 kilometers) south of Savannah.

McIntosh County commissioners sued to stop the referendum and a lower court ruled that one would be illegal. The decision halted a vote on the zoning change with less than a week to go before Election Day. Hundreds of people had already cast early ballots in the referendum.

The high court on Tuesday found that the lower court was wrong to conclude that the zoning ordinance was not subject to referendum procedures provided for in the Georgia Constitution's Home Rule Provision.

“Nothing in the text of the Zoning Provision in any way restricts a county electorate’s authority to seek repeal of a zoning ordinance,” Supreme Court Justice John Ellington wrote in the opinion.

“We feel vindicated,” said Jazz Watts, a Hogg Hummock homeowner who helped organize the referendum effort. “The election should not have been stopped. It was stopping the voice of the people.”

It wasn’t immediately clear when a referendum might be rescheduled. But attorney Dana Braun, who represents the Hogg Hummock residents, said the ruling will give county residents “some real say" in whether they support the zoning change.

McIntosh County attorney Ken Jarrard said in an email that the county commissioners are “obviously disappointed” by the order but respect the high court's ruling.

Jarrard had asserted during oral arguments at the Supreme Court in April that zoning powers are different from others entrusted to county governments by the state Constitution and, therefore, can't be challenged by referendum.

Philip Thompson, an attorney representing the Hogg Hummock residents, had argued that they have a constitutional right to a referendum on the zoning changes so that they can defend a place that’s “a cultural and historical treasure.”

Roughly 30 to 50 Black residents live in Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, a community of dirt roads and modest homes founded by their enslaved ancestors who worked the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding.

It’s among a dwindling number of small communities started by emancipated island slaves — known collectively as Gullah, or Geechee, in Georgia — scattered along the coast from North Carolina to Florida. Scholars say the island's separation from the mainland caused the communities to retain much of their African heritage, from their unique dialect to skills and crafts such as cast-net fishing and weaving baskets.

In 1996, Hogg Hummock earned a place on the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of treasured U.S. historic sites. Residents depend on the local government in McIntosh County, where 65% of the 11,100 residents are white, to maintain protections that preserve the community.

The state Supreme Court was not weighing whether Hogg Hummock deserves special protections. Instead, the justices had to consider technical questions about whether local zoning laws can be challenged by referendum and whether McIntosh County commissioners had a right to sue to stop the vote last October.

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Associated Press writer Russ Bynum contributed reporting.