Georgia’s highest court sides with slave descendants fighting to protect threatened island community

A sticker saying "Keep Sapelo Geechee" is worn on the shirt of George Grovner, a resident of the Hogg Hummock community on Sapelo Island, during a meeting of McIntosh County commissioners in Darien, Georgia, in September 2023. Russ Bynum/AP Atlanta AP —

Georgia’s highest court Tuesday sided with Black landowners in a fight over zoning changes that weakened long-standing protections for one of the South’s last Gullah-Geechee communities founded by freed slaves.

The state Supreme Court unanimously reversed a lower court ruling that had stopped a referendum to consider repealing a revised zoning ordinance passed by McIntosh County officials two years ago. Residents of Sapelo Island opposed the zoning amendments that doubled the size of homes allowed in a tiny enclave called Hog