A federal judge on Thursday significantly extended the deadline for Atlanta organizers who have been trying to gather more than 70,000 signatures to force a vote on the construction of a police and firefighter training center that critics call “ Cop City.”
U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen ruled that the city had imposed an unlawful requirement that those collecting signatures have to be residents of Atlanta. A group of people who live in DeKalb County just outside the city had sued — saying they should be allowed to join in the canvassing effort and noting that the planned site for the training center itself is in unincorporated DeKalb County, outside the city limits.
“Requiring signature gatherers to be residents of the city imposes a severe burden on core political speech and does little to protect the city’s interest in self-governance,” Cohen wrote, adding: “The city has offered no specifics as to why permitting nonresident plaintiffs to gather signatures … will cause any disruption to the political process.”
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