“Cop City” protestors in Atlanta opposed to a new $90 million police training center are suing the city for refusing to approve a petition that could halt the project’s development during the next municipal election.
A coalition of demonstrators, called Stop Cop City Vote, are suing Atlanta Interim Municipal Clerk Vanessa Waldon for denying the petition June 14 for “frivolous” reasons, claiming it did not include information the suit argues only she could provide. Waldon did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
Instead of challenging Waldon on her reason for the denial, the coalition submitted a new petition which it believed corrected the mentioned error.
“The effect is that the clerk denied the petition because the clerk itself had not yet formatted it correctly,” the lawsuit states.
On Friday, Waldon told the group that she would look over the revised petition, the suit states, alleging that she intended on treating the revised petition as a new one, which would give her office an additional seven days to approve the document.
Waldon allegedly closed her office at noon ahead of the holiday weekend without issuing a ruling on the case.
The coalition is asking the court to compel Waldon to approve the petition, through what’s known as a writ of mandamus, and provide copies of it to them, in addition to awarding the group reasonable attorney fees incurred from filing the action.
According to the suit, the group has 60 days to collect the 70,000 necessary signatures that would put a referendum on the ballot Nov. 7. Once the signatures have been collected, the city council will have 50 days to determine if the petition is valid, the suit states.
After that, the city has one week to issue a call for the ballot, which must be placed 29 days prior to the election. This means that every day demonstrators don’t collect signatures puts them at risk of not getting the referendum on the ballot at all.
“As a result of this timetable and the clerk’s…
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