ATLANTA — A federal court has sided with DeKalb County residents who sought to collect signatures for the referendum petition aiming to stop the construction of the future Atlanta Public Safety Training, called "Cop City" by opponents.
A standing Atlanta ordinance had barred outside residents from collecting signatures for petitions within the city. A judge in the Atlanta federal district court ruled the ordinance violated 1st Amendment political speech rights.
"The residency requirement clearly limits the number of persons who can promote the petition's message thereby limiting the potential number of the City's residents who can receive the political message and making it less likely that the proponents of the petition can gather sufficient signatures to place the initiative on the ballot," the ruling stated.
Organizers hoping to stop the police and fire training center project will have to get signatures from 15% of the city's voters to get a referendum that - if passed by voters - would revoke a City Council measure that was passed to partly fund the building of the center.
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The federal ruling has no impact on who can actually sign the petition, which is still restricted to Atlanta registered voters.
That works out to about 70,000 signatures - a big undertaking that could now be aided by the addition of volunteers from DeKalb County. Organizers say they're about halfway there.
Notably, the order from the federal judge also highlighted how it will restart the 60-day window organizers have to collect the signatures, from the point a petition is approved and issued by the city clerk.
11Alive reported on June 21 that the petition was approved after a contentious back-and-forth between the city and activists over its formatting.
The window will "restart on the date the Municipal Clerk provides official copies of the Referendum Petition that do not contain the requirement that the person collecting the signatures must be a City of Atlanta resident," the order states.
The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center project has to this point cleared regulatory and legal hurdles in DeKalb, where it is being built on a portion of the South River Forest, and has had funding approved by the Atlanta City Council.
A public referendum would likely stand as one of the last real roadblocks to it being built. Site work has already begun and construction is expected to begin this summer.
The full court ruling can be seen below: