ATLANTA – Both sides in Georgia’s abortion fight have laid out new legal arguments in the wake of last month’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized the procedure.
The case started when the General Assembly passed legislation in 2019 banning most abortions in Georgia after a fetal heartbeat could be detected – usually around six weeks of pregnancy.
A U.S. District Court blocked the law from taking effect after a group of reproductive care providers – led by SisterSong – successfully sued in 2020.
The state of Georgia appealed the district court’s decision to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Last fall, the appellate court put a decision on Georgia’s law on hold until a definitive Supreme Court ruling on abortion.
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade – stating that there is no constitutional right to abortion in America – the appellate court requested updated legal briefs from both sides in the Georgia case.
In a brief filed late last week, reproductive rights advocates who oppose the law appear to say they will no longer pursue a constitutional right to abortion as a legal path to block Georgia’s abortion law. Instead, both sides’ briefs focused on the broad definition of a “person” found in Georgia’s abortion law.
Part of the Georgia abortion law redefines a “natural person” to include “an unborn child,” which is now emerging as a key legal debate.
The brief from SisterSong and other reproductive care providers in Georgia argues that the broad definition of a person found in the Georgia abortion law – read in concert with other parts of Georgia law – would result in a chilling effect on medical care for pregnant women in Georgia.
They say the broad definition could even lead to prosecution of medical providers for providing “critical medical care that pregnant patients need.”
The chilling effect on physicians would cast a shadow over patients’ care – specifically the “fundamental right to procreate,” argue the plaintiffs. That would infringe on people’s right to make childbearing decisions.
“By threatening reproductive health-care providers with criminal penalties for providing routine obstetrical and gynecological care, such as amniocentesis and miscarriage care, and thus chilling and delaying needed diagnostic and treatment … the Personhood Definition forces those who choose to procreate to incur needless medical risk,” the plaintiffs said.
In contrast, the state contends that the “natural person” definition in the abortion law is not unconstitutionally vague.
The state also argues that even if the “natural person” definition found in Georgia’s abortion law is unconstitutionally vague, that would leave the rest of the Georgia abortion law intact.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Judy Fitzgerald, commissioner, Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities
ATLANTA – Georgians suffering from mental distress now have a new nationwide three-digit phone number they can call for help.
The new 9-8-8 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline went into effect on Saturday. Dialing the number puts a caller into direct contact with a trained mental health counselor rather than an emergency dispatcher who must handle a variety of calls including crimes in progress, fires and traffic accidents.
Counselors are able to address a caller’s immediate mental health needs and help connect them to ongoing care.
Today, an estimated 8% of all calls to 9-1-1 are related to a mental health crisis, according to data from Vibrant Emotional Health. The new 9-8-8 number will provide an easy-to-remember three-digit number people can call to receive the right mental-health crisis support.
Georgia is well prepared to make the 9-8-8 system a success, said Judy Fitzgerald, commissioner of the state Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD).
Calls to the new number from Georgia will be routed through the Georgia Crisis and Access Line, which was established in 2006 to provide around-the-clock support to people in crisis.
“Georgia’s work to develop its crisis network over the past 12 years has DBHDD well positioned for change,” Fitzgerald said.
“I am very excited about this work, how important it is, both in preventing suicide and in building a diverse coalition to develop an infrastructure that supports Georgians’ mental wellbeing for generations to come.”
The new system is expected to reduce health-care spending with more cost-effective early intervention, reduce the use of law enforcement and other safety resources by diverting calls from people in mental- health crisis, meet a growing need for crisis intervention and help end the stigma people feel when seeking mental-health services.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
The 3,000 Jynneos vaccines received so far are enough to vaccinate 1,500 people, agency spokeswoman Nancy Nydam said. A full vaccination requires two doses 28 days apart.
So far, 93 people with confirmed monkeypox cases have been identified in Georgia, all among men in metro Atlanta, Nydam said. Most are men who have sex with men.
The Jynneos monkeypox vaccines have been sent to health departments that have requested them and will also be distributed at two vaccine events, Nydam said.
Distribution at first will be focused on the metro region’s core counties of Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton, she said.
The Jynneos vaccine was chosen because of its better safety profile, chief medical officer Dr. Alexander Millman said at the state board of public health meeting Tuesday.
Georgia is following the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines that suggest vaccinating high-risk individuals first, Nydam said.
“Vaccination may be recommended for people who are close personal contacts of people with monkeypox, individuals who may have been exposed to monkeypox, or people who have increased risk of being exposed to the virus such as lab workers,” she said.
Monkeypox is a viral disease that causes the skin to break out in pustules. The disease is usually mild but can be life threatening in some cases.
Nydam said monkeypox is not transmitted like COVID but rather through close, skin-to-skin contact with people who have monkeypox.
“While many of those affected in the current global outbreaks are gay, bisexual, or other men who have sex with men, anyone who has been in close contact with someone who has monkeypox can get the illness,” Nydam said.
The DPH announced the first case of monkeypox in Georgia June 1. According to CDC data posted this week, Georgia’s 96 cases put it fourth in the country after New York, California, and Illinois.
Georgia is expected to receive additional vaccines from the federal government later this summer “as production of the vaccine ramps up,” Nydam said.
In the meantime, Nydam said, people who think they may have been exposed to monkeypox should contact their health-care provider.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Georgia Power’s latest plan for meeting the electrical-generation needs of its customers would keep the Atlanta-based utility on a path toward relying less on burning coal and more on renewable energy.
But environmental and consumer advocates are asking the state Public Service Commission to require Georgia Power to do more when the PSC votes July 21 on the utility’s 2022 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), an update the company submits every three years outlining its planned mix of energy sources for the next two decades.
Specifically, the IRP’s critics want the commission to order Georgia Power to:
Retire two coal-burning units at Plant Bowen near Cartersville, in addition to other coal units at Bowen and several other power plants around the state the utility already is proposing to close in the IRP.
Reject at least one of six natural gas power purchasing agreements (PPAs) Georgia Power plans to pursue.
Double the commitment the utility made in the IRP to develop an additional 2,300 megawatts of solar power.
Lift a cap limiting Georgia Power’s rooftop solar pilot project to 5,000 customers.
Reinstitute Georgia Power’s commitment in the IRP it submitted last January to a 1,000-megawatt battery storage project, which the utility dropped last month in an agreement with the PSC’s Public Interest Advocacy Staff.
Reject Georgia’s Power’s plan for closing its network of coal ash ponds, which would leave some ash stored in unlined pits in contact with groundwater.
If the commission approves the IRP in its current form, Georgia Power would fall short of its own stated long-term goals, a coalition of leaders of college student-run organizations across the state focused on environmental issues wrote in a statement submitted to the PSC July 2.
“While our current expansion of clean energy provides us hope, it is not moving nearly fast enough to avoid climate change’s worst impacts,” the students wrote.
“Their plan will maintain our heavy reliance on fossil fuels for the next 20 years, despite [Georgia Power parent] Southern Company’s commitment to net-zero emissions.”
Georgia Power should go all-in on its plan to retire its fleet of coal-burning power plants, including the two units at Plant Bowen, because they’re simply not economical in today’s era of stricter government regulation of carbon emissions, Robert Jackson, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, told members of the PSC’s Energy Committee July 14.
But doing away with the entire coal plant fleet got some pushback during that hearing from Clay Jones, a lawyer for the Georgia Association of Manufacturers, one of the parties that signed on to last month’s agreement.
“You’re already approving a significant retirement of coal assets,” Jones told commissioners. “We believe maintaining Bowen Units 1 and 2 provides a key hedge against overreliance on volatile natural gas prices.”
Katie Southworth, advocacy program director at the Atlanta-based sustainability organization Southface Energy Institute, said if Georgia Power continues operating the two coal units at Plant Bowen beyond 2027, it wouldn’t need the gas power purchasing agreements.
The Sierra Club is calling on the PSC to require Georgia Power to double its commitment to renewable energy sources including solar and wind power.
But Simon Mahan, executive director of the Southern Renewable Energy Association, said an inadequate transmission system is an obstacle to Georgia Power significantly expanding its portfolio of renewables.
“The company is having difficulty retiring uneconomic power plants without a robust transmission system,” he said. “Building transmission would better enable the commission to adopt more low-cost renewables sooner rather than later.”
Jill Kysor, a lawyer representing the Atlanta-based Southern Environmental Law Center, said another obstacle to the expansion of renewables in Georgia is the cap on Georgia Power’s rooftop solar program. She suggested doing away with cap entirely rather than raising it from the current 5,000 customers.
“If the cap is increased but the number is too small, we’ll just have a rush into the program,” Kysor said. “Certain types of customers, like churches or middle-income families, that take longer to make decisions won’t be able to react quickly and get into the program.”
The PSC debated the cap issue last year when the program proved so popular the number of participating customers was threatening to bump up against the cap.
Brandon Marzo, a lawyer representing Georgia Power, said lifting the cap on the rooftop solar program would lead to an unacceptable shifting of costs to customers not participating in the program.
“You’re going to ask customers who are not providing the service to pay for it,” Marzo told commissioners during the July 14 hearing.
Brad Carver, a lawyer representing the Large-Scale Solar Association, asked the PSC not to let Georgia Power back away from its January proposal to develop 1,000 megawatts of power through innovative battery storage technology.
After the utility raised concerns over whether the project’s potential benefits would justify the cost, the project was dropped in the agreement reached last month.
“Investments in storage are the way to help our transmission constraints,” Carver said.
Jackson asked commissioners not to let Georgia Power leave the coal ash in some of the ash ponds it is planning to close in unlined pits in contact with groundwater, a practice he said is illegal under both state and federal law.
The Sierra Club fought Georgia Power’s two-pronged plan to remove the ash from some ponds and leave it in place in others all the way to the state Supreme Court, which has declined to hear the case.
“Closure in place and closure by removal are acceptable and protective of human health and the environment if performed correctly,” Marzo said.
At the July 14 hearing, Marzo urged commissioners not to make any changes in the stipulation agreement reached last month.
“All the provisions in the stipulation have been negotiated,” he said. “Any change in one provision could affect the balance of the bargain.”
But Commissioner Tim Echols noted the PSC has a history of changing Georgia Power IRPs.
“In every single IRP that we’ve had since 2013, this commission has done more solar than you all wanted to do,” Echols told Marzo.
At the end of the hearing, Echols hinted that rooftop solar could be among the changes the PSC imposes on the utility. He said raising the cap on the program to 75,000 customers would generate 500 megawatts of solar power in the more populated northern half of Georgia.
“That would allow us to get some additional solar on the grid north of I-20,” he said. “Wouldn’t that help with reliability in North Georgia?”
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court has declined to take up a legal challenge to Georgia Power’s plan to collect $525 million from customers in coal ash pond closure costs.
The Sierra Club had appealed to the high court after both a Fulton County trial court and the state Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Atlanta-based utility, upholding a 2019 vote by the Georgia Public Service Commission giving Georgia Power the green light on its plan.
Georgia Power plans to spend nearly $9 billion to close all 29 of its ash ponds at 11 coal-burning power plants. The company intends to excavate and remove the ash from 19 ponds and close the other 10 ponds in place.
Coal ash contains contaminants including mercury, cadmium and arsenic that can pollute groundwater and drinking water as well as air.
The lawsuit sought to force Georgia Power – rather than its customers – to pay for the cleanup, with the Sierra Club arguing the utility was to blame for the coal ash problem.
“There are people all over the state who have to deal with serious impacts from coal ash in the form of poisoned drinking water and unsafe fishing and recreation,” Charline Whyte, senior campaign representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign in Georgia, said Friday.
“Now, every Georgia Power customer is picking up some of the tab for a decision that the utility knowingly made for decades.”
The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have charged Georgia Power’s decision to leave some of the coal ash in unlined pits in contact with groundwater violates federal clean-water standards.
Lawyers for the utility have countered that the ash pond closure plan complies with federal regulations for ash ponds as well as the more stringent requirements of the Georgia Environmental Protection Division.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
