Georgia’s “heartbeat law” banning abortions after the first six weeks won’t take effect until at least mid-July despite last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is asking both sides in a lawsuit over Georgia’s law to file legal briefs within the next three weeks. The heartbeat law prohibits most abortions in Georgia after the detection of a fetal heartbeat. Passed in 2019, the law never took effect due to a lawsuit filed by reproductive rights organizations.
Most recently, the appellate court put a decision on the Georgia law on hold until the Supreme Court ruled on abortion – as it did on Friday.
Hours after the court announced its decision, Georgia attorney general Chris Carr filed a notice asking the appellate court to rule on Georgia’s law.
State Sen. Jen Jordan Monday signaled what could be Georgia Democrats’ legal strategy in the case. Jordan, D-Atlanta, who is challenging Republican Carr’s reelection bid, told reporters at a news conference the heartbeat law is unconstitutional both under Georgia and federal law.
Jordan said Georgia’s constitution provides a very strong right to privacy, which the heartbeat law violates.
“A right of privacy has been recognized in Georgia since approximately 1903,” she said.
“Georgia’s [right] has been reaffirmed over and over and over, and it is considered to be one of the strongest in the nation in terms of the case law interpreting it. There is absolutely a viable path in terms of challenging the law under the Georgia constitution.”
Designating a fertilized egg a legal person, as the law does, would open a “Pandora’s box” of litigation, Jordan said.
Women who miscarry a pregnancy could face investigation or prosecution under the heartbeat law, Jordan said.
“We are facing basically a situation where women are going to be asked incredibly private questions about their lives,” she said.
Jordan said that if elected attorney general, she would not enforce the law.
“I would not defend it because I don’t believe it is lawful,” she said.
At least eight Georgia district attorneys (DAs) have said they will not prosecute people seeking or providing abortion in their jurisdictions.
“We stand together in our firm belief that prosecutors have a responsibility to refrain from using limited criminal legal system resources to criminalize personal medical decisions,” said a letter sponsored by Fair and Just Prosecutors, a national network of elected prosecutors working for criminal justice reforms.
That letter was signed by the DAs for Gwinnett, DeKalb, Douglas, Chatham, Athens, Macon and Augusta as well as DAs in other states.
Fulton County DA Fani Willis also said on Friday that she would not prosecute abortion seekers or providers.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The University System of Georgia (USG) generated an economic impact of $19.3 billion across the state during the last fiscal year, up $700 million – or 3.8% – over fiscal 2020.
That economic impact translated into 152,629 full- and part-time jobs, about a third of which were on campus and two-thirds off campus.
“USG institutions and the system as a whole are key contributors to our state and an economic engine for communities in every region of Georgia,” system Chancellor Sonny Perdue said Monday. “That economic impact continues to climb.”
The $19.3 billion in economic impact in fiscal 2021 includes $13.1 billion in spending by students and the 26 institutions in the university system, a portion of which came in the form of federal pandemic relief. The remaining $6.2 billion was the multiplier effect those funds had in communities across Georgia.
The annual economic impact report was produced by Jeff Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Georgia population projections (courtesy: Georgia Data Analytics Center)
ATLANTA – Georgians now have easier access to information about their government, thanks to a small-but-mighty team working behind the scenes to present data to the public.
The Georgia Data Analytics Center (GDAC) was founded in 2019 under the auspices of the Office of Planning and Budget.
“We’re currently able to capture and analyze amounts of data that were unthinkable just a decade ago,” Kanti Chalasani, the director of the center, said.
The GDAC website features “data dashboards” that take complex data from state agencies and put it into simple charts, graphs, and maps.
“We want to give this data to people, to public entities who are wanting to serve their constituents,” Chalasani explained during a recent presentation to the Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission.
The interactive dashboards help Georgians get a big-picture look at a topic or zero in on specific aspects of the data they find most interesting.
The state employee salary dashboard has been the most popular feature so far, Chalasani said.
The center anonymizes all the data and has a strong security structure in place to protect the data, Chalasani said.
Chalasani has been a Georgia employee for 25 years; this is her fifth big data project for the state.
“I live and breathe data,” she told the behavioral health reform commission.
Her five-person team has collected and published a wide variety of state data in a short timeframe.
Once the team receives a dataset from a state agency, it only takes between three weeks and three months to process the data into the interactive dashboards, Chalasani said.
“We built a tiger team, with an assembly line of activities and an efficient data pipeline,” Chalasani said of her approach. “Our team is sincere and driven.”
“[The] biggest challenge is to convince our state agencies to share their data with GDAC and to establish a data sharing agreement with them,” Chalasani said.
Chalasani and her team are eager to continue serving up information about state government to Georgians.
“Our cooking station is ready: just give us the data,” she emphasized.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power is asking the state Public Service Commission (PSC) for a rate hike of nearly 12% during the next three years, with the vast majority of the increase front-loaded into 2023.
The proposed increase, which the Atlanta-based utility filed Friday with the PSC, would raise the average residential customer’s bill by $16.29 per month. Of that amount, $14.32 would take effect next Jan. 1. Another $1.35 would be tacked onto monthly bills in 2024, followed by an increase of 62 cents in 2025.
The increase is needed to strengthen Georgia Power’s electric grid, add more renewable energy to its power-generation portfolio and improve customer service, said Chris Womack, the company’s chairman, president and CEO.
“It’s a real significant commitment to our infrastructure to make sure we are responding to our customers … as we move from coal to more gas and solar,” he said.
Georgia Power also is seeking a return on equity (ROE) of 11%, up from the 10.5% ROE the commission approved in the utility’s last rate case three years ago.
“We’re requesting to maintain the financial integrity of the company,” Womack said of the ROE proposal. “That actually puts downward pressure on rates.”
Environmental and consumer advocates criticized the proposed rate hike as excessive.
“Georgia Power’s customers already pay some of the highest electric bills in the country,” said Liz Coyle, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Georgia Watch. “If the Public Service Commission approves this steep rate hike, it will add a significant burden to already stretched household budgets.”
“Sierra Club is carefully reviewing Georgia Power’s proposal, and we’ll be looking for any unreasonable investments in existing, uneconomic fossil fuel plants as well as how the company plans to deal with the cost of coal ash clean up,” added Charline Whyte, senior campaign representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign in Georgia.
“Throughout this rate case proceeding, Sierra Club will fight to make sure customers aren’t stuck paying the bill for coal plants that Georgia Power doesn’t even need.”
Georgia Power has been reducing its reliance on fossil fuels in recent years. In the rate-case filing, the utility is proposing to retire 3,600 megawatts of generating capacity from coal- and oil-burning power plants by 2028.
The company is pledging to add 6,000 megawatts of power from renewable energy by 2035, doubling its generating capacity from renewable sources.
Georgia Power also plans to increase its commitment to electric vehicles. A shortage of EV charging stations across Georgia has been identified as a barrier to developing the technology.
“We want to be a good partner in supporting the buildout of that infrastructure,” Womack said.
The PSC will hold hearings on the rate hike request later this year and vote on the proposal in December.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation
ATLANTA – The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion Friday, heralding a new era for dealing with a controversial issue that has split the nation for decades.
The case examined a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks. Five of the justices (Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) agreed with Alito’s opinion.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote a concurring opinion that upheld the Mississippi ban on abortions after 15 weeks but argued the court should not have overturned Roe. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented.
States will now be able to decide how they want to handle abortion without any federal guardrails.
“The authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and its elected representatives,” the decision states.
In Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp steered the so-called “Heartbeat Law” through the General Assembly in 2019, prohibiting most abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, typically around the sixth week of a pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant.
A U.S. District Court ruling in 2020 deemed the Georgia law unconstitutional, putting it on hold.
The state appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The appellate court said it would hold off on a decision until the Supreme Court ruled definitively in the Dobbs case.
“We have just filed a notice in the 11th Circuit requesting it to reverse the district court’s decision and allow Georgia’s Heartbeat Law to take effect,” GOP state Attorney General Chris Carr said Friday. “The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs is constitutionally correct and rightfully returns the issue of abortion to the states and to the people – where it belongs.”
Georgia Democrats blasted the Supreme Court as a blow to women’s rights.
“The basic right of having control over one’s own body will now wholly depend on the action of leaders that we elect at the state level,” said state Sen. Jen Jordan, D-Atlanta, who is challenging Carr for attorney general. “Our fundamental rights are on the ballot this November.”
The gubernatorial candidates weighed in as well.
“Today’s landmark ruling is a historic victory for life,” Kemp said. “I look forward to its impact on the legal proceedings surrounding our historic LIFE Act and hope our law will be fully implemented and ultimately protect countless unborn lives here in the Peach State.”
“This mean-spirited, political decision will only prevent access to safe abortions and exacerbate crises in our state by preventing medical professionals from providing their patients with lifesaving care,” said Democrat Stacey Abrams, who is running against Kemp. “I want to lead One Georgia — a state where women have the right to choose, control their bodies and not have their rights stripped away.”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
