title: GA SUPREME COURT Denies KKK Right To “Adopt A Highway”…While IL City “Unanimously, Proudly” Names Street After Black Panther
text: Is our government telling us certain hate groups are more acceptable than others?Does the Ku Klux Klan have a constitutional right to  adopt a highway ?That question was at the center of a high-profile battle Monday before the Georgia Supreme Court, where the Klan is challenging the state s refusal to let it participate in the popular Adopt-A-Highway program.The hate group, with the American Civil Liberties Union by its side, is casting its bid as a free speech issue. The government cannot be a censor of free speech,  Alan Berger, an attorney for the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, said.But the Georgia Department of Transportation has resisted the KKK s efforts ever since 2012 to join the program.For its part, GDOT maintains it should be allowed to exclude certain groups from the program   and stands by its claim that the KKK s  long rooted history of civil disturbance  would  cause a significant public concern. Monday s arguments centered around Georgia s claim of so-called sovereign immunity   a legal doctrine that shields the state from civil suit or criminal prosecution. The state had appealed a lower court decision by Judge Shawn LaGrua, who ruled Georgia was not protected against the KKK suit because the group claimed the discrimination involved a violation of its constitutional rights. The state denied the application, not because of safety hazard or some other compelling government interest, but because the state disagrees with what the KKK represents,  Maya Dillard Smith, executive director of the ACLU of Georgia, told FoxNews.com.  It is precisely this kind of government action the Constitution prohibits. While Smith admits that many people who hear about the case have a  visceral reaction  to it, she warns its outcome could have a dangerous ripple effect. What may seem as chipping away only at the KKK s free speech right, will, in fact, open Pandora s box and create legal precedent that justifies curtailing the free speech rights of religious evangelicals, abortion protestors and even Black Lives Matter supporters and opponents,  she said.A judgment is not expected for a couple of months, Berger told FoxNews.com following Monday s oral arguments. In the meantime, GDOT has suspended Adopt-a-Highway applications.This isn t the first time a state has gone rounds with the white supremacist group.In 1994, Missouri tried to block the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from participating in its Adopt-A-Highway program.The group   which excludes anyone who is black, Jewish, Mexican or Asian   had requested a half-mile section of road on Interstate 55, one of the routes that had been used to bus black students to school as part of desegregation efforts near St. Louis.The state denied the KKK s request.In that case, lawyers for the state unsuccessfully argued that it had 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.The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case, thereby forcing the state to allow the group to take part in its  Adopt-A-Highway  program. However, the state later kicked the group out, saying it failed to do its job and pick up the litter on its adopted stretch of highway. Via: FOX NewsSo what about the YMCA which houses the Fred Hampton Aquatic Center on former Oak Street  In Maywood, IL that was officially named after Black Panther, Fred Hampton who was slain in a police raid in 2007. September 9, 2007From now on, Oak Street in Maywood will be known as Fred Hampton Way.Relatives of the slain Black Panther leader joined congressmen, activists and Maywood residents Saturday to dedicate the street and a statue of Hampton that now sits in front of the Fred Hampton Family Aquatic Center.Last year, efforts to name a street on Chicago s West Side for Hampton failed amid controversy that Hampton and the Panthers advocated violence against police.But there was no such debate in Maywood, whose mayor, Henderson Yarbrough, said the village council  unanimously, proudly  voted to give Hampton his due. There ought to be some footprints in the sand in relation to this man,  said the Rev. Al Sampson, one of about 75 people at the ceremony.  Fred Hampton represents part of the tradition of liberation freedom fighters. Killed in police raid in  69 Maywood s police chief attended the event, along with U.S. Representatives Danny Davis and Bobby Rush, a co-founder of the Illinois Black Panther Party.Hampton, who grew up in Maywood, and fellow Panther Mark Clark were gunned down by Chicago Police in a 1969 raid at Hampton s apartment. Hampton had helped bring the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party to national prominence and also brokered a nonaggression pact between gangs. 