A Texas couple wants to remove a historic balcony from their home because of its racist connotations – but their city won't let them, according to a report.
Kristy Money and her husband Rolf Straubhaar have sued San Marcos and its director of planning and development services over the wrought iron balcony installed by a previous homeowner who had ties to the Ku Klux Klan, reported KXAN-TV.
“It doesn’t represent our family’s values,” Money said.
Previous homeowner Frank Zimmerman, who also owned a theater that hosted Ku Klux Klan events in the 1920s, installed a metal "Z" symbol associated with the hate group, which the couple said they did not know about when they bought the house.
“We felt a bit heartbroken. We wanted to do our best to, to be a force for good,” Money said. “Teach our kids anti-racism values. We weren’t going to ignore it.”
They applied for permission from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission to remove the emblem, but the request was unanimously denied at the board's May 4 meeting after some members described the "Z" as a defining element of the house.
“That’s the whole point of being in a historic district, you know, to kind of like respect the past,” one commission member said.
The couple has filed a lawsuit challenging the local ordinance that allows the commission to decide what homeowners can do with their property in the Burleson Historic District, and their attorney argued that authority violated constitutional protections.
“We believe that both under the United States Constitution and the Texas Constitution when you regulate someone’s property, it has to be based in nuisance or harm, or something that actually falls within the general powers of government,” said attorney Chance Weldon.
Officials with the city and the historic preservation board declined to comment to KXAN-TV on the ongoing lawsuit.
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