Feds go after Iowa town for its multi-colored streeet crossings

CNN - When the city of Ames, Iowa, installed rainbow-colored crosswalks at a downtown intersection, it wanted to signal that it was welcoming and inclusive to people of all gender identities, sexualities and races.

So when the federal government threw the city a roadblock, they decided to ignore it.
In a letter dated September 5, the Federal Highway Administration, a division of the US Department of Transportation, requested that the colorful crosswalks be removed because they didn't comply with federal traffic control standards.

Two of the crosswalks in Ames feature the colors of the inclusive Pride flag, which adds black and brown to the rainbow LGBTQ Pride flag designed by Gilbert Baker in the 1970s. Another features the gender-nonbinary colors of purple, black, yellow and white, while yet another features the transgender pride colors of blue, white and pink. 

 

City Attorney Mark O. Lambert sent a memo addressed to the Ames mayor and city council, outlining his own interpretation of the situation.

The FHWA doesn't appear to have jurisdiction over the roads where the crosswalk is, Lambert wrote, since the streets are not part of a federal highway and receive no federal funding. Instead, he said it should be up to the state of Iowa to decide whether the federal traffic control standards were enforced on its streets.

"With the system of federalism in the United States, the federal government does not have jurisdiction over everything," Lambert stated in the letter.