ATLANTA (CN) — Residents of what is believed to be the last intact community of descendants of enslaved West Africans took their fight against a county zoning rule change to the Georgia Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Living on a small, designated portion of Sapelo Island, one of Georgia’s 15 coastal islands located about 70 miles south of Savannah, the Gullah-Geechee people are federally recognized as a distinct culture with their own indigenous Creole language, heritage, and culture.
They are the descendants of slaves who were brought to the island to work on plantations and have lived continuously on the island for over 150 years since the end of the Civil War in Hog Hammock, a 434-acre district listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
However, the Gullah-Geechee population has slowly dwindled as descendants either sold their land or moved off the island, which has limited access through a state-run ferry. Today, fewer than 50 still live full time on Sapelo, occupying small dwellings and mobile homes.
The Gullah-Geechee community, along with other residents of Sapelo Island, have been battling for years to “protect and preserve the Hog Hammock community,” Savannah-based attorney Philip Thompson told the court Wednesday.
Since September 2023, they have been fighting against a zoning amendment passed by the McIntosh County Commission that allows for larger homes to be built in the district.
The ordinance change more than doubled the allowable home size in the sparsely populated Hog Hammock settlement, spurring concerns that it will drive out the few remaining Gullah-Geechee residents to make way for large vacation homes and resorts on the mostly state-owned island.
“The (probably intended) effect of the amendment is to strip the community of its protection under the former zoning code and subject it to future development that will likely irreparably alter Hog Hammock’s character and forever diminish (if not destroy) its historical and cultural value,” the residents wrote in their brief to the court.
Their fight now lands in the hands of the state’s highest court after they appealed a ruling from McIntosh County Superior Court that killed a special election that would have let voters decide on whether to repeal the zoning rule change.
Residents started a petition movement called Keep Sapelo Geechee and collected more than 2,300 signatures to prompt McIntosh County Probate Court Judge Harold Webster to hold a special election under the state constitution’s Home Rule provisions.
In Georgia, home rule grants counties and municipalities legislative power to adopt ordinances, resolutions, and regulations related to their property, affairs, and local government, as long as they don’t conflict with the state constitution or general laws, according to the Georgia Municipal Association and the Georgia General Assembly.
Early voting was underway, and more than 800 people had already voted when Tifton Judicial Circuit Senior Judge Gary McCorvey stopped the election as requested in a suit by the county.
McIntosh County argued to the Georgia Supreme Court on Wednesday that the petition and referendum powers in the Home Rule section of the constitution could not apply to zoning decisions because the power to make zoning decisions is provided in a separate section of the constitution.
The justices weighed whether enacting zoning changes falls under the authority of the county and how much legislative authority is granted under the state constitution to county governments.
They voiced consideration of tossing the county’s challenge to the referendum petition after scorning its attorney, Ken Jarrard, for not including the zoning ordinance at issue in the record to the court.
“How will you ever meet your burden without having the ordinance before us?” Justice Carla Wong McMillian said.
“They won. It is your duty as an appellant to right the wrong,” she added.
Justices Nels Peterson also expressed confusion over what to do with a separate suit filed by the county against its own probate court judge, claiming Webster acted outside of his authority in allowing the special election. An attorney for Webster urged the court to dismiss the writ of prohibition by the county because the judge was not a party in controversy.
The residents argued that the county has no right to directly challenge either the petition or the election.
Thompson said the Home Rule referendum provision applies to any exercise of the county’s legislative power because it is the only delegation of legislative power that enabled the county to pass the amended zoning ordinance.
He also argued that a previous case before the state Supreme Court affirmed the rights of citizens to review a county’s action via referendum, although the power has rarely been used in Georgia.
In 2023, the high court unanimously sided with citizens of Camden County who forced a referendum to cancel the county’s plans to purchase land for a commercial spaceport.
Spars with the local government of McIntosh County, whose population is 65% white, are nothing new to Sapelo Island residents and landowners. Dozens successfully appealed huge property tax hikes in 2012, and residents spent years pursuing a civil rights challenge in federal court for basic public services, including firefighters and trash collection, before county officials settled in 2022.