These two principles might appear to easily resolve the Klan case. And certainly the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision mirrored the Supreme Court's Boy Scouts decision in certain ways. Thus it suggested that Klan members, conversely, may clean parts of the highway that other groups have adopted. Anyone, the court found, can volunteer. But that matters little.
States speak through their signs.
And endorsement of the Klan, given the organization's history, is tantamount to a message of racism and hostility. The sign, in short, implies a message of government-sanctioned hatred and fear. The issue is not, as in the famous First Amendment case, whether the Nazis can march in Skokie. It is, in effect, whether Skokie will honor them by erecting a highway sign with a swastika on it. No wonder Missouri tried to fight this case all the way to the Supreme Court.