Appeals court hears 'Cop City' petition case

Caption

Activists gather outside Atlanta City Hall, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023, where they delivered dozens boxes full of signed petitions to force a referendum on the future of a planned police and firefighter training center. An analysis of petition entries by four news organizations finds it’s unclear whether petitioners have enough valid entries to force the citywide vote, with nearly half the entries unable to be matched to eligible registered Atlanta voters.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, file

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Thursday that could decide the fate of an effort to stop Atlanta's controversial public safety center from moving forward.

Opponents of the so-called "Cop City" project launched a petition drive earlier this year that gathered more than 108,000 entries seeking to force a ballot referendum that could cancel the city's lease for the public safety training center.

State law says the collection period must run for 60 days and those who witness the petition signing must be registered city voters. Four DeKalb County residents who live near the site — situated just outside of Atlanta city limits — filed a lawsuit in July arguing the residency requirement to collect petitions violated their rights.

A federal judge agreed, writing that requiring collectors to be Atlanta voters "imposes a severe burden on core political speech" and restarted the 60-day clock to collect signers. The city appealed that decision, arguing that the overall petition process is invalid and cannot force a vote to cancel a contract and that the judge's decision was overbroad.

Those arguments, as well as those from the DeKalb residents who filed the lawsuit, appeared before the 11th Circuit months after activists turned in more than 22,000 pages of names.

• MORE: Analysis: It's uncertain if push to 'Stop Cop City' got enough valid signers for Atlanta referendum

So far, the city has refused to begin the petition validation process, citing the pending court case, and has refused to answer questions about how they would handle certain questions that arise with the verification of petition entries.
 
Meanwhile, an analysis of 1,000 randomly sampled entries by GPB News and three other news outlets finds it's possible organizers could meet the threshold for success to force a vote over the center's future — if every entry is analyzed and if the courts don't narrow what could count.

If the courts find the petition process is valid but the longer collection window and broader scope of who could witness signatures is reversed, the analysis finds roughly 20% of potentially eligible sampled entries could be disqualified — likely defeating the effort.