EDITORIAL – Court rules Klan can adopt Mo. highway

The Adopt-A-Highway program usually inspires thoughts of civic kindness, the sort of warm,… The Adopt-A-Highway program usually inspires thoughts of civic kindness, the sort of warm, fuzzy feelings we often associate with kittens and Mister Rogers. Groups volunteer to pick up trash and beautify the otherwise unornamented blacktop, keeping the highway scenery pristine, so we can notice its prettiness while tearing through it at a mile-a-minute.

We don’t often associate that sort of civic-mindedness with the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group that calls interracial relationships “satanic.” But a Supreme Court decision handed down yesterday gives the Klan the right to adopt a Missouri highway, citing that sort of volunteerism as free speech.

The Klan won its lawsuit against the state of Missouri. Missouri had objected to the Klan adopting a highway, bringing up practical concerns that this might result in an increased amount of litter or endanger road workers whom people may confuse for Klan members. Pennsylvania, with nine other states, filed a brief backing Missouri’s position.

These concerns are legitimate, especially considering that there will be an Adopt-A-Highway sign featuring the group’s name on the half-mile strip of highway the Klan intends to adopt. Missouri will probably end up devoting time and money to preventing motorists from expressing destructively their (understandable) opinion of the Klan.

Still, the Court was right to treat this as a matter of free expression. While the Klan’s actions and agenda are revolting, hateful and deserving of condemnation, the Bill of Rights exists to protect everyone’s right to free speech.

The American thing to do, then, is not to ban the Klan from adopting a highway, but to react in a peaceful way. In recent years, whenever the Klan has tried to rally, its members have been met with an overwhelming number of counter-demonstrators. Similarly, instead of barring the Klan, perhaps this will lead to a surge in Adopt-A-Highway members, with groups hoping to edge out the Klan.

Of course, all of this depends on whether the Klan can make good on its promise to clean up a highway. In 2001, Missouri kicked another Klan chapter out of the Adopt-A-Highway program after the group repeatedly neglected its section of I-55 — which the Department of Transportation had renamed a few months after the Klan had adopted it. I-55’s new name? The Rosa Parks Highway.