ATLANTA – A Fulton County Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that the state cannot enforce a 2019 Georgia law banning most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Judge Robert McBurney’s ruling found key provisions of the abortion ban were void “ab initio,” or from the start, because they violate the U.S. Constitution – as it stood when the legislature passed and Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the law in 2019.
“At the time … it was unequivocally unconstitutional for governments – federal, state, or local—to ban abortions before viability,” wrote McBurney.
McBurney found two key provisions of the Georgia law void: a provision allowing doctors to be charged with a felony for performing an abortion and a requirement that doctors report their rationales for “otherwise illegal” abortions to the state Department of Public Health.
McBurney’s order prohibits any state or local government official from enforcing the abortion law.
But it leaves the door open for the General Assembly to reconsider the abortion issue in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last June to overturn the landmark 1973 abortion-rights decision Roe v. Wade.
“It may someday become the law of Georgia, but only after our legislature determines in the sharp glare of public attention that will undoubtedly and properly attend such an important and consequential debate,” wrote McBurney.
Georgia enacted House Bill 481, also known as the “heartbeat law” or the LIFE Act, three years ago. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit – led by reproductive rights group SisterSong – challenged the law in federal court.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roev. Wade, a federal appeals court allowed the Georgia law to take effect in July. The pro-choice advocates then took their fight to Fulton County Superior Court, challenging the abortion ban on the ground that it violated both the federal and Georgia constitutions.
“Today’s ruling recognizes that the legislature’s decision to take away abortion access across our state was in clear violation of the law,” said Andrea Young, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, which represented the plaintiffs in the case. “Today is a great day for Georgia women and for all Georgians. Today their right to make decisions for their own bodies, health, and families is vindicated.”
The state, represented by the office of Republican Attorney General Chris Carr, has already filed an appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court, said spokeswoman Kara Richardson. Carr was re-elected to a second full term as attorney general last week.
“[We] will continue to fulfill our duty to defend the laws of our state in court,” added Richardson.
Abortion will also likely play a key role in the December U.S. Senate runoff between Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker. Warnock is pro-choice, while Walker has supported the Georgia abortion law. Walker has denied allegations that he paid for two ex-girlfriends’ abortions.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – The Georgia Department of Education has selected 12 counties to pilot a new teacher evaluation program beginning next school year.
The list includes urban, rural and charter school districts. The state will fund a supplement to teachers and team leaders participating in the pilot.
The current teacher evaluation system, called the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES), evaluates teachers based on a combination of student growth, the teacher’s ability to meet certain performance standards and progress toward professional development goals.
Georgia teachers are required to undergo at least two, and in some cases up to six, classroom observations of their teaching each year.
“Our aim is to create a teacher evaluation system that values and elevates educators, instead of devaluing them – recognizing their central and irreplaceable role in student success,” State School Superintendent Richard Woods said. “I wish to thank these districts for coming alongside us to pilot a new system that is designed for teacher growth, from beginning teacher to teacher leader – to the benefit of students.”
The Georgia Association of Educators (GAE) supports the pilot program.
“We look forward to working with the Georgia Department of Education and the districts to move Georgia toward a teacher evaluation system that promotes educators as the professionals they are and provides a mechanism for educators to increase their skills and proficiencies in the classroom,” GAE President Lisa Morgan said.
School districts selected for the new pilot program, called the Georgia Leadership and Educator Acceleration and Development System, include Atlanta Public Schools; the school districts of Brooks, Clay, Dooly, Dougherty, Gordon, Jefferson, Lowndes, and Muscogee counties, the Griffin-Spalding and Savannah-Chatham school systems; and Liberty Tech Charter School.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
Memorial Hall at Stone Mountain Park (photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – The board of the Stone Mountain Memorial Association Monday selected Birmingham- and Nashville-based Warner Museums to design new history exhibits for Memorial Hall at Stone Mountain Park.
Warner has experience designing exhibits that address the South’s complex history of racism, including at Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, the Negro Southern League Museum and the Montgomery Bus Station Freedom Riders Museum.
“This park, and the new exhibits, offer a unique opportunity for presenting history in a way that informs, educates, and challenges people to learn about their shared history,” said the Rev. Abraham Mosley, chairman of the board. “After having seen their work up close, we have no doubt that the fine folks at Warner Museums can do that.”
The board selected Warner Museums from a list of six applicants after visiting some of the company’s sites in person. Board members were impressed with exhibits they saw from Warner at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church site, where four Black girls were killed in a bombing in 1963, and the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center in Chattanooga, Tenn.
“The exhibit galleries will explore the complete and complex history of Stone Mountain, and I would point out this is only the beginning of a longer process of getting input from all parties and working with the community to put together a project the state of Georgia can be proud of,” said Bill Stephens, Stone Mountain Memorial Association CEO.
The process is expected to take one to two years to complete, said Stephens, and so far, no decisions about exhibit content have been finalized.
The exhibit designers and the board will consult with historians as well as members of the public about their thoughts on the exhibit, Stephens said.
“A lot of this project is about memory and about how people remember things from the Civil War,” Stephens said. “We need to talk to experts, historians and others about how that memory comes about.”
The decision to award the new contract comes on the heels of major changes in the park’s management. In July, a new company, Thrive Attractions, took over management of the park from a former park manager that had been in place for 30 years. And the board adopted a new logo for the association last year that leaves out the Confederate symbols contained in the old logo.
In preparing the new exhibit, Warner Museums will need to navigate controversies over the park’s past and present. Many have been critical of the park’s close association with Georgia’s Confederate past, calling for a plan to cover up or minimize the large carving of three Confederate political and military leaders on the granite outcropping’s northeastern face.
But the carving cannot be removed because the General Assembly passed legislation in 2019 prohibiting removing historic monuments from public property. And park management has been reluctant to change other reminders of the Confederate past, such as streets named after Confederate leaders.
Stephens said that listening would be key to navigating potential controversies over the museum content.
“If some people on both sides are a little uncomfortable, then you’re probably doing something right,” he said.
The exhibit is slated to be completed in one-and-a-half to two years, said Stephens.
The Stone Mountain Memorial Association is the park’s chief governing authority. Its members are appointed by the governor.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – When Georgians go to the polls – again – next month to vote in the U.S. Senate runoff, they’ll be participating in a unique – and complicated – state tradition.
That’s because Georgia is the sole state to require runoffs in both primary and general elections. In Georgia, candidates must earn at least 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff.
Some other Southern states have a runoff rule in primary elections – but not for general elections like the one Georgia held this month. (Mississippi recently adopted a measure that requires general runoffs for statewide races that will start with next year’s elections.)
In Georgia, although Democratic U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock earned about 35,000 more votes than Republican challenger Herschel Walker, neither candidate crossed the 50% threshold because Libertarian Chase Oliver drew 2% of the vote. Walker and Warnock now face a runoff for the Senate seat on Dec. 6.
It won’t be Warnock’s first: He won his Senate seat in 2021 by defeating then-incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler in a runoff.
Georgia’s modern era of runoffs began when the legislature adopted a new election code in 1964, explained University of Georgia political scientist Charles Bullock. The legislature put the runoff system in place – but excluded the governor’s race.
That presented a problem in 1966, when neither Democrat Lester Maddox nor Republican Bo Callaway could pass the 50% mark in the general election due to a write-in candidate. After court challenges, the state legislature – controlled by Democrats – was allowed to choose the governor. Lawmakers chose party-fellow and staunch segregationist Maddox.
In response, and with Maddox’s support, Georgia voters adopted a 1968 constitutional amendment requiring the governor’s race to go to a runoff in the absence of a clear-majority winner.
The state’s runoff law has not been immune to legislative tinkering since then. Back in 1992, Democrat Wyche Fowler lost his Senate reelection bid to Republican Paul Coverdell in a runoff.
Fowler had earned more votes in the general election but neither candidate crossed the 50% mark. Fowler fell to Coverdell in the rematch. The Democratic-controlled General Assembly then changed state law to require only 45% of the vote to avoid a runoff.
That paid off in 1996, when Democrat Max Cleland drew more than 45% – but less than 50% – of the vote, skirting a rematch and winning a Senate seat outright.
In 2005, the by-then Republican-controlled state legislature and then-Gov. Sonny Perdue changed the law back to the 50% threshold.
That would later prove fatal for another Perdue-family pol, David. The incumbent Republican senator – cousin of the former governor – won more votes than Democrat Jon Ossoff during the November 2020 elections but fell just short of the 50% mark, pushing the race to a runoff. Ossoff bested Perdue by about 55,000 votes in the Jan. 2021 rematch, winning the Senate seat in a runoff upset.
“It cuts both ways,” said Bullock, the UGA political scientist, about the impact of Georgia’s unique general election runoffs on political outcomes.
Some have criticized the runoff rules for ties to the state’s segregationist past. For example, a 1990 federal court challenge to Georgia’s primary runoff rule argued it was racially discriminatory and violated the U.S. Constitution.
The plaintiffs, a group of Black Georgians, argued primary runoffs are designed to keep white people in office and Black candidates out. As evidence, they pointed to statements by then-state Rep. Denmark Groover and other early supporters of the system who thought runoffs would preserve white political power. White voters could group together in a runoff to defeat a Black candidate, even if the white vote had been split initially and the Black candidate had initially drawn the most votes, the plaintiffs argued.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Groover had been motivated by “racial animus” – a fact which Groover had, in fact, confirmed in interviews. However, the three-judge panel’s 1998 ruling found the primary election runoff law was not discriminatory in intent or practice.
Despite that court ruling, many still think the runoff rule was racially discriminatory in intent.
“[The Georgia runoff rule] did not remove anyone’s right to cast a ballot, but it was commonly regarded as hampering African Americans … from making their votes count more effectively at the polls,” said a 2009 U.S. Department of Interior report.
From the point of view of political strategy, political scientist Bullock said, runoffs can provide Georgia voters an extra chance to vet candidates. Georgians who vote on Dec. 6 will experience this for themselves, when they get a final chance to weigh in on the Warnock-Walker race.
A new generation of political scientists is analyzing the law’s impact on Georgia. Kerwin Swint, J. Benjamin Taylor, and Ayla McGinnis, all of Kennesaw State University, collected data on runoff turnout, costs and attitudes in more than a third of Georgia’s 159 counties.
Using this data, the team calculated that the 2020 Senate election runoffs cost about $75 million statewide. Smaller counties face the greatest burden, since they tend to have fewer resources than large counties.
And though the Georgia runoffs draw national attention, turnout is lower than in the main elections, suggesting voters lose interest as time goes on.
One option the researchers recommend considering is Instant Runoff Voting, which allows voters to rank candidates on Election Day. The majority winner is identified during tabulation. Georgians could also eliminate runoffs, instead electing the candidate who gets the most votes in the general or primary, said Swint.
All Georgians who were registered to vote by Nov. 7 can vote in the December runoff. Early voting will begin Nov. 28.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – A Georgia Senate committee focused on addressing homelessness heard Wednesday from a variety of Georgians who have directly experienced living on the streets.
Those who testified came from diverse backgrounds but shared the common experience of homelessness. They described in frank terms the challenges they faced in trying to bounce back.
“A lot of it was due to alcohol and drugs,” said Darlene Adair, explaining why she was homeless for around 20 years.
Adair now runs her own nonprofit and serves as an advisor to a major Atlanta nonprofit devoted to homelessness. She described being forced into uncomfortable situations just to be able to sleep in a car for a night.
Adair said that she thought a combination of a housing-first approach and “self-love” among people who are homeless are needed to solve the problem.
“Join [those] together – we can fix something that will work for everybody,” she said.
Homelessness has increased partly due to people’s struggles to earn enough to afford housing, Adair added.
Other people have faced serious mental health struggles that derailed promising life plans. For example, Kellie Bryson, who served in the U.S. Army, became homeless not long after she was discharged and ran out of savings. She said the experience only compounded her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“I found myself making the streets, parking lots, and parks of Atlanta,” said Bryson. “I lived in a constant state of fight or flight.”
Bryson said she initially reached out to some government resources for help but after not receiving any, she stopped asking for help. She said youth facing homelessness may distrust adults and lack access to information about resources.
Bryson now has housing and serves on the Atlanta Youth Action Board, which advises local groups about youth perspectives on homelessness.
The committee also heard witnesses from rural Georgia, where homelessness is a growing problem.
“What’s coming to our community is going to be devastating, because we simply have not prepared to mitigate the COVID needs for recovery as needed,” said Sherrell Byrd, founder and executive director of SOWEGA Rising, a Southwest Georgia group focused on organizing to improve local conditions.
Byrd said increasing housing, utility and food prices are making it difficult for many families to afford their rents or mortgage payments.
“These are the types of factors that are really impacting the lives of rural Georgians in a way that’s going to cause a serious wave of homelessness,” Byrd said.
Trista Wiggins, who manages five private apartment complexes in the Albany area, affirmed Byrd’s observations. She may soon have to evict more than 50 families who have not been able to pay their rents.
“My concern is their families who, through no fault or very little fault of their own, are now facing being evicted from their homes and being homeless,” said Wiggins, who noted that COVID has hurt many families’ earning ability.
“Not all landlords, I promise, are bad,” Wiggins said. “We want to try and keep these families in their homes.”
Wiggins and Byrd said some the families they work with have faced problems getting federal COVID rental relief, noting that many faced delays or never received responses.
This was reiterated by Kelley Saxon of Greater Valdosta United Way, who said families in the Valdosta area also face problems getting rental assistance.
There are currently around 150 people living without shelter in the Valdosta area and around 600 students in the area who were either unsheltered or living with families in crowded conditions to avoid homelessness, Saxon said.
“Please don’t forget about us below the [Macon] line down here,” she said.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
