Black residents of Hogg Hummock on Sapelo Island refiled a legal challenge to zoning they fear will lead to higher taxes and push them off their ancestral Gullah Geechee community in McIntosh County.
The original complaint filed in October challenged zoning change passed by county commissioners to allow houses on the island to double in size to 3,000 square feet. Attorneys for several members of the last intact Gullah Geechee community on Georgia’s coast say the new ordinance is discriminatory.
That complaint was dismissed on a procedural error because it named not only the county but also individual commissioners as defendants. Plaintiffs were able to sue only the county, due to the waiver of sovereign immunity set forth in a Georgia constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2020. The new legal document names the county and drops the additional defendants, but retains the same legal arguments.
About 96% of Sapelo is owned by the state. In the 434-acre enclave called Hogg Hummock, about 250 acres are owned by descendants of enslaved people brought to the island from West Africa, the complaint states. Hogg Hummock is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The nine plaintiffs fighting the county also are unchanged. Each is a Black “resident, citizen, and taxpayer of Sapelo Island and McIntosh County,” the complaint notes. They are: Georgette “Sharron” Grovner, Marvin “Kent” Grovner Sr., Lula B. Walker, Francine Bailey, Mary Bailey, Merden Hall, Florence Hall, Yvonne Grovner, and Ire Gene Grovner Sr. Attorneys from Southern Poverty Law Center and Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore are representing them.
