Coronavirus has sickened hundreds of thousands people and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
COVID-19 liability protections for Georgia businesses and hospitals are set to be extended into the summer of 2022 after legislation cleared the General Assembly on Wednesday.
The bill, sponsored by state House Majority Whip Trey Kelley, R-Cedartown, extends liability protections for another year to shield businesses and health-care facilities in Georgia from lawsuits brought by people who contract COVID-19 in all but the worst negligence or recklessness cases.
The liability protections, which passed late in last year’s pandemic-interrupted legislative session, took effect in August and were set to expire in mid-July of this year. Kelley’s bill extends the protections sunset to July 14, 2022.
State Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, who carried Kelley’s bill in the Senate, said the measure leaves current liability protections as-is in a way that balances protecting businesses and hospitals with leaving the door open for workers to sue in worst-case scenarios.
“I think the bill strikes the right balance in still allowing gross negligence cases to be brought,” Strickland said form the Senate floor on Wednesday. “We do expect businesses to provide some precautions, and that’s the balance we try to strike in this bill.”
Business leaders hailed the COVID-19 liability protections as assurance Georgia businesses and hospitals will not face crippling litigation during the pandemic, which has greatly taxed health-care providers and enterprises across the state from mom-and-pop shops to sports stadiums.
Opposing unions and employee advocates slammed the liability terms as too much in favor of employers at the expense of workers struggling to keep their jobs, leaving them legally in the lurch if they get sick from the virus.
Kelley’s bill passed Wednesday in the Senate 36-17 with some Democratic lawmakers voting in favor after it passed last month in the House of Representatives along party lines. The bill now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
The liability protections evaded changes proposed on the Senate floor Wednesday by lawmakers on the one hand who wanted to broaden protections for workers and on the other from lawmakers who sought to strengthen protections further for businesses that put up warning signs.
Sen. Jen Jordan, D-Atlanta, brought a failed amendment that would have allowed workers who cannot do their jobs from home to bring workers’ compensation claims if they contract COVID-19 on the job, which Jordan says they currently cannot do under state law.
“If we say we value essential workers, if we say but for them we cannot be here, then we need to put our proverbial money where our mouth is and actually extend some protections to them,” Jordan said.
Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, also tried but failed to bring an amendment that would have blocked sickened Georgians from suing hospitals and businesses that put up certain warning signs, even if those entities acted recklessly or with gross negligence to provide safety measures.
The gross-negligence threshold marked a compromise between health-care professionals, business leaders and trial attorneys in the final days of last year’s session that sparked disagreement between House and Senate Republicans.
Kelley, who chairs the House Special Committee on Access to the Civil Justice System, where the liability protections faced debate, was joined on the bill by more than a dozen co-sponsors including several top Republican lawmakers as well as long-time Democratic Reps. Calvin Smyre of Columbus and Mary Margaret Oliver of Decatur.
Coronavirus has sickened hundreds of thousands people and killed thousands more in Georgia. (Image: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Judges and court staff in Georgia will be eligible for COVID-19 vaccines starting Wednesday amid a large boost in dose shipments from the federal government that kicked in this week.
The addition of Johnson & Johnson-brand vaccines has helped roughly double the weekly allocation sent to Georgia from 228,000 doses in recent weeks to 458,000 doses, Gov. Brian Kemp said at a news conference Tuesday.
Widening eligibility to judges and court staff comes as state officials eye opening up COVID-19 vaccines to all Georgians, potentially as soon as early next month.
“We are getting closer to that day,” Kemp said. “So I still feel very good about that timeline.
“As we get more vaccines, we’re going to open up this sucker to everybody.”
Georgians can pre-register for a vaccine appointment at myvaccinegeorgia.com even if they do not yet qualify under the governor’s eligibility criteria. They will be notified once they qualify and scheduled for an appointment.
Along with judges and court staff, Georgia’s vaccine eligibility list currently includes all residents ages 55 and older, health-care workers, nursing home residents and staff, first responders and people with physical, mental and behavioral health conditions.
State data shows roughly 2.7 million vaccines have been given in Georgia so far, though Kemp said that figure does not include about 250,000 doses that officials have identified as administered but that have not yet been reported by local providers.
Nearly 1 million of those vaccines have been given to Georgians ages 65 and older. About 70% of the state’s older and most vulnerable populations have received at least one dose, Kemp said.
With demand still sky-high for vaccines, Kemp said his office is warning many providers to stop withholding vaccines to make sure patients receive both doses and to administer them within 7 days – or face smaller allocations going forward as shipments to Georgia continue growing.
“To be clear: We are going to move these doses where the demand is,” Kemp said. “And we are going to ship these doses to where they’re being used most efficiently. That is my message today to providers.”
Demand has particularly fallen in rural South Georgia, possibly due to doubts over the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness, the governor added. He urged everyone to schedule appointments for the vaccine so that enough Georgians will have immunity to effectively halt the virus’s spread.
“Vaccination is our ticket back to normalcy,” Kemp said. “The more people who are vaccinated, the more lives are saved and the quicker we get back to our normal way of life.”
The boost in vaccine shipments also comes as Georgia prepares to open five new mass vaccination sites Wednesday in Savannah, Columbus, Waycross and Bartow and Washington counties. Those add to four other sites already open in metro Atlanta, Macon, Albany and Habersham County.
As more Georgians are vaccinated, the number of people who are contracting COVID-19 and being hospitalized by the virus is continuing to decline after a sharp winter outbreak, said Georgia Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey.
“This is a good sign,” Toomey said on Tuesday. “We would like to keep it down and keep it declining in the weeks ahead, and everybody being vaccinated will help with that effort.”
More than 837,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Tuesday afternoon, with roughly 199,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results. The virus has killed 15,928 Georgians.
Legislation before the General Assembly would pave the way for college student athletes in Georgia to receive financial compensation when institutions profit from their playing abilities.
The bill, sponsored by House Higher Education Committee Chairman Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, would allow Georgia athletes to earn compensation for the use of their “name, image or likeness” by the public, private or technical colleges they attend.
It aims to prepare Georgia for the legal impacts of a future when – either by choice or a judges’ orders – the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) starts permitting student athletes to gain financial benefits for their talents.
“This is just to put a straw man in place should it be decided at the national level so our student athletes can avail themselves of it,” Martin said Tuesday at a state Senate Higher Education Committee hearing.
“I don’t know if this is the best thing happening for college student sports, but it is happening. So we need to be prepared.”
Chances for Martin’s bill to clear the state legislature look promising after the House passed it unanimously earlier this month. No votes were taken on the bill during Tuesday’s committee hearing.
Under the bill, college athletes in Georgia would be required to take five hours of a “financial literacy and life skills workshop” to ready them for the added burdens of receiving compensation for sports performance.
That requirement drew praise Tuesday from Sen. Nan Orrock, D-Atlanta, who echoed Martin in saying a crash course in personal finances would help college athletes avoid predatory influences seeking to take advantage of their earnings.
“That seems to be incredibly worthwhile to put in place to equip these young athletes with the skill sets they’re going to need,” Orrock said.
Martin’s bill would also bar schools from offering cash or other incentives to high-school recruits and would require sports agents seeking to represent college athletes to obtain the same type of license needed to represent professional athletes.
The bill comes amid a flurry of lawsuits in recent years challenging the NCAA’s authority to block student athletes from receiving compensation while also profiting from their skills through advertising and video games.
Backers of allowing college-athlete compensation contend students are treated unfairly by institutions that gain from their playing abilities but often do not cover all the costs to attend school like textbooks and travel, even with full scholarships.
Opponents, including the NCAA, have argued paying or otherwise incentivizing college athletes would detract from their focus in school classes and other on-campus activities, as well as trampling on colleges’ authority to set their own rules when it comes to athlete compensation.
Most immediately, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to hear a case from California brought by a former college athlete, West Virginia running back Shawne Alston, who sued the NCAA and several college leagues in 2014 for not allowing compensation to pay for costs beyond what his scholarship covered.
The NCAA appealed to the Supreme Court after Alston won in lower and appellate courts. The high court is scheduled to take up the case on March 31.
A plan to create legal homeless camps on public and private properties in Georgia by redirecting some funds from existing local outreach and shelter groups drew debate in a General Assembly committee on Monday.
Legislation sponsored by Rep. Katie Dempsey, R-Rome, would send state dollars currently earmarked for building shelters and short-term housing to be used instead on so-called “structured camping facilities” for a city or county’s homeless population.
The camps would have to provide water, electrical outlets and bathrooms and could only be used for up to six months by a homeless person, effectively reserving the facilities for Georgians who are motivated to find work and secure permanent housing.
“There is no doubt this is a little out-of-the-box,” Dempsey told the state House Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee. “It’s creative [and] it’s a different way than we’ve done it.”
Dempsey’s bill, which faces long odds of advancing in the last days of the 2021 legislative session, was hailed Monday by some advocates as an innovative way to address certain kinds of homelessness and slammed by others concerned about money being stripped from shelter-based programs.
Backers of Dempsey’s bill point to a legal camp that local officials set up in Douglas County three years ago to curb the area’s rising homeless population, called Shinnah Haven.
Located on county-owned property, the camp requires residents to keep out of fights, clean their appointed spots and provide official identification in return for a stable place to pitch a tent, access to social workers and electricity from a solar panel, said Douglas County Judge William “Beau” McClain.
“We need to start this in the state of Georgia before [unsheltered homelessness] gets out of hand,” McClain said. “It’s practical to not bring these people to the [emergency room and] to not house them in jail. It’s a practical solution to the problem.”
On top of the camps, Dempsey’s bill also proposes requiring cities with homeless populations larger than the state average to spend a chunk of state and federal grants to create outreach teams made up of police, social services workers and mental health professionals tasked with moving people from illegal street camps to sanctioned homelessness services.
That provision, as well as the proposal to redirect funds for new shelters and short-term housing, sparked backlash from local groups that work to secure permanent housing for Georgia’s homeless populations – particularly since they said Dempsey had not consulted them on the bill before Monday.
Legal homeless camps in places like San Francisco that are much larger than the one in Douglas County have led to sanitation problems and made little headway in reducing the number of people living in tents on the street or in the woods, said Cathryn Marchman, chief executive officer for the group Partners for HOME, who leads Atlanta’s homelessness efforts.
Marchman also questioned whether homeless persons might be forced to live in government-sanctioned camps, potentially triggering an illegal living situation “like a homeless internment camp.”
“If we’re talking about being innovative and actually ending this problem instead of perpetuating it, we should be talking about how we as a state fund and create sustainable revenue streams for permanent housing solutions,” she said. “And we also need to look at the unintended consequences of what sanctioned encampments have done and created around the country.”
No votes were taken on Dempsey’s bill Monday, which fell one week after the Crossover Day deadline for legislation to pass out of one chamber or the other to remain in contention for final passage.
Dempsey, who oversees state mental-health funding as chairwoman of the House Appropriations’ Human Resources Subcommittee, said her bill aims to “begin the conversation” for bringing new ideas to addressing homelessness in Georgia.
“The bottom line is that the effective reduction in street homelessness will help communities be safe,” Dempsey said.
Voting-rights advocates protest inside the state Capitol against Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan’s (R-Carrollton) elections bill before its passage in the Georgia Senate on March 8, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – Controversial legislation to overhaul voting by mail in Georgia and how voters can cast early ballots is racing toward the finish line in the General Assembly amid a sharp outcry from local voting-rights and church groups.
Two bills, both proposing dozens of changes to Georgia’s election system, recently cleared major hurdles in the current legislative session and are on a collision course to final passage as top lawmakers in the state Senate and House of Representatives decide which measures to keep and which to scrap.
Most likely on the chopping block is a proposal to end Georgians’ ability to vote by mail without giving a reason that has drawn a loud outcry. Democratic leaders call the move an attempt by state Republicans to gut mail-in voting after absentee ballots drove historic wins in the 2020 election cycle.
Separately, church leaders and Democratic backers of former gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams are building up grassroots efforts to combat proposals to clamp down on line warming and weekend voting, portraying those Republican-brought measures as rooted in voter suppression.
Critics have also condemned the GOP-led election bills as attempts to curb voter turnout in Black and other minority communities that tend to lean Democratic, particularly after Black voters and mail-in ballots helped flip the presidency and both of Georgia’s two U.S. Senate seats in the 2020 elections.
“These bills are directly evil,” said Rev. Ferrell Malone Sr., the senior pastor of Macedonia Baptist Church in Waycross. “They are literally evil, and they’re coming from men and women who say they are Christians.”
Republican leaders in the House and Senate have held firm in their argument that the legislative proposals are needed to protect voter integrity in Georgia after the 2020 elections sparked doubts over the security of mail-in voting and identity verification.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton, has dismissed attacks on an omnibus elections bill he is sponsoring in the Senate that includes repealing no-excuse absentee voting, as well as a new rule requiring Georgians to provide a driver’s license or state ID card number in order to request an absentee ballot.
Dugan and supporters of those measures in the Republican-controlled General Assembly also highlight the strain that processing millions of absentee ballots put on local election workers tasked with running three weeks of early voting and managing Election Day for several elections in the 2020 cycle.
“If we keep using more and more of the absentee [ballots], you’re going to overwhelm the counties multiple different ways, in the workload and the cost,” Dugan said. “The highest number of rejected ballots are mail-in absentee ballots, even with the curing process.”
“This is about [how] the method of voting in Georgia has significantly changed over the last 10 years.”
The proposal in Dugan’s bill that has come under the most criticism would limit absentee voting only to those who physically cannot go to the polls on Election Day or for early voting, ending the no-excuse absentee voting option that Republicans passed into state law in 2005.
The measure has also drawn pushback from top state Republicans including House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, and Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, who refused to preside over the Senate vote on Dugan’s bill last week in protest of the no-excuse absentee voting repeal.
Dugan has since backed off that proposal, noting that lawmakers will likely move to strip out the no-excuse absentee ban as his bill moves in the House.
“I want a good reform bill to go through,” Dugan said. “And if I’m going to get everything killed because of something that I feel is important that a majority of both chambers don’t necessarily agree with, then I’m not going to die on that hill for ego.”
It has not been settled among Republican leaders yet whether to push Dugan’s bill or a separate 66-page omnibus measure sponsored by Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, as the final set of proposals that lawmakers are expected to negotiate before passing onto Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.
Fleming, whose office did not respond to requests for an interview for this story, has pitched several contentious changes that include requiring counties to pick either a Saturday or a Sunday for early voting and forbidding people from giving food or drinks to voters waiting in line outside polling places.
Those two proposals have prompted some of the fiercest backlash against the GOP-led elections bills by voting-rights advocates who blast them as blatant attempts to depress voter turnout in Democratic-leaning minority neighborhoods that often face long lines at polling places.
“It’s just a very cruel thing to do to people who are good Samaritans and have their faith move them to help people exercise their right to vote,” said Hillary Holley, organizing director for the group Fair Fight Action that Abrams founded following her loss to Kemp in the 2018 gubernatorial election.
“Seeing the state try to punish volunteers for helping people who are on the brink of passing out in line to vote is just horrifying.”
Abrams’ Fair Fight group, as well as local churches and other grassroots organizations, are now mobilizing to drum up widespread public opposition to state Republicans’ elections bills, including by pressuring large Georgia-based companies including Coca-Cola, Delta and Southern Company to take a stand against the bills.
Already, pressure by protesters in Southeast Georgia has spurred Hancock County officials to formally request that Fleming resign from his post as the county’s attorney on grounds that his measure is at odds with the county’s majority-Black population.
“We stand on the cusp of something great in history,” said Rev. Willie Wiley, presiding elder of the Augusta-Sparta district of the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. “Don’t allow ambitious people who have not the interests of Georgians at heart to rob us of this unique opportunity.”
Meanwhile, Dugan says he’s weathering the storm of criticism and personal attacks his bill has inspired, while focusing on helping steer whichever set of proposals most lawmakers in the General Assembly want to see cross the finish line later this month, whether they come from Fleming’s bill or his own.
“My concern is really not the politics of it,” Dugan said. “My concern is actually having something that is beneficial for the state moving forward.”
