by Ty Tagami | Mar 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislation seeking to give Georgians more leverage to invoke religion when disagreeing with government requirements is primed for final passage after clearing a committee Wednesday.
Senate Bill 36 passed the House Judiciary Committee 9-6 after amendments washed away prior changes, restoring the bill to the version that the Senate approved in early March.
The main sponsor, Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, said the measure shields people against state intrusion into their religious beliefs and practices. Critics, including the lone Republican on the committee who voted with all Democrats against passage, said SB 36 would allow people to use religion to discriminate against others, for instance by allowing landlords, adoption agencies, restaurants and other businesses to refuse service to gay people.
During a lengthy hearing last week, 29 people spoke for and against the measure. At least one religious figure opposed SB 36 but most speakers who represented a church favored the bill, saying their faith needs legal protection.
“People of faith are being censored, facing demands to violate their conscience,” said Bishop Garland Hunt, executive pastor at The Father’s House, a non-denominational church.
Opponents noted that most states that have adopted a religious freedom law also have a counter-balancing non-discrimination law that prohibits using religious beliefs to refuse service to LGBTQ+ people.
Setzler resisted attempts to add such language to SB 36. An amendment proposed by Rep. Deborah Silcox, R-Sandy Springs, last week sought to balance religious rights “against discrimination on any ground prohibited by federal, state or local law.”
Although Georgia lacks a statewide non-discrimination law, 18 communities have such local ordinances, and Silcox wanted to give those local laws legal weight against religious rights.
Republicans voted down her amendment.
After the committee passed the bill Wednesday, Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, said the committee’s vote against the Silcox amendment showed that “the true intent of this legislation is weaponizing religion.”
SB 36 now goes to the House Rules Committee ahead of a possible final vote by the full House.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 25, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Transgender student athletes would be banned from female sports under two bills in the Georgia legislature, and the version from the state Senate has taken the lead.
A committee of the Georgia House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 1 Tuesday after it was amended to mirror some elements of the version from the House of Representatives, which awaits a Senate hearing.
Both measures passed their own chambers largely along party lines.
The Senate version now carries the same title as House Bill 267, which was named after Riley Gaines. She became a flag bearer for the movement to ban transgender athletes born male from female sports after she lost a swimming championship to a transgender athlete in 2022.
SB 1 was not amended to copy HB 267 in one very big way though: the House bill would alter most of Georgia law to read “sex” where the word “gender” is used. SB 1 would only do that in relation to school and college sports.
Proponents, including Christian groups, say a ban is needed to protect female athletes against physically stronger competitors despite testimony that very few transgender athletes exist and that transgender people are not always larger and stronger.
“We are creating a boundary around female sport,” Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, the chief sponsor of SB 1, said Tuesday. The House Education Committee then passed his bill on to the House Rules Committee, paving the way for a vote by the full House. There was significant committee opposition to passage, but it was a voice vote without a public tally.
Rep. Josh Bonner, R-Fayetteville, the chief sponsor of HB 267, signaled House collaboration with the Senate when he called the new version of SB 1 a “commonsense compromise.”
Before the vote, the committee took public testimony that was consistent with what lawmakers have heard previously. A lawyer for Frontline Policy Action, a Christian advocacy group, testified that her organization helped write both the House and Senate versions of the legislation and supported SB 1, as did a representative of the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition.
Critics testified that if SB 1 were to become law, females who look male could get accused of being transgender and become subject to bullying. The legislation empowers parents to make accusations and to sue schools and colleges — both public and private — that they believe have violated the transgender prohibition.
Opponents also said elementary school children would be affected despite the focus on adults like Gaines.
Transgender people are an exceptionally small demographic. The Williams Institute at the UCLA law school estimates there are 1.6 million transgender people ages 13 and older in the United States, including nearly 22,000 in Georgia, of whom 3,400 are minors.
“With so many Georgians struggling for things like just trying to get by and pay the bills, I really wonder why we’re focused on this,” said Rev. Kimble Sorrells, a United Church of Christ minister. “It feels like this is really just political grandstanding.”
by Ty Tagami | Mar 25, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Children and adolescents won’t be able to use personal cellphones in public schools starting next fall after the General Assembly overwhelmingly supported banning the devices in elementary and middle schools.
House Bill 340 passed the Georgia Senate Tuesday 54-2 after the state House of Representatives passed it with strong bipartisan support in early March.
Gov. Brian Kemp will soon decide whether to sign the measure. So kids and parents will need to mentally prepare for the technology that tethers them to each other be severed during the school day.
The “Distraction-Free Education Act” requires schools to develop policies that allow parents to reach their kids, for instance, by calling the principal’s office, and it provides exemptions for students with disabilities or medical conditions that require them to use a cellphone for learning or for health reasons, such as checking their glucose level.
But starting in July 2026 all other kids would have to hand over or lock up their device from the first bell of the school day until the final ring. The ban applies even during emergencies, when experts testified that cellphones pose a dangerous distraction, even if parents wish they could still contact their children during, say, a mass shooting.
The crackdown comes amid growing global concerns about the effect of technology and social media on children.
Documentaries such as “The Social Dilemma” have explored how social media companies target children and their attention. Books such as “Stolen Focus” by British journalist Johann Hari have described the impact of the resulting distraction on their ability to function. The new Netflix drama “Adolescence,” about a boy accused of killing a girl, prompted British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to say he was concerned about social media spreading misogyny to young males.
Last year, Australia banned social media for those under 16. Last fall, France initiated a trial ban on cellphones in schools for students ages 11-15, with a potential expansion nationwide. Denmark is talking about banning them in schools, too.
Absent action from Congress, states in America have been tackling the issue on their own, with at least a half dozen already enacting bans like the one Georgia’s legislature has passed.
They’re reporting fewer disruptions and more interaction among students.
“The evidence is clear” that cellphones are a “major” distraction in classrooms, Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, the chair of the Senate Republican Caucus, said on the Senate floor Tuesday.
“This bill isn’t just about academics,” he said. “It’s about student well-being.”
Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, the majority whip, called cellphones a “serious cancer” in classrooms.
Some Democrats said Republicans are using the phone issue to distract from the concerns about school shootings. But they unanimously supported HB 340 in the Senate, with the only “no” votes coming from two Republicans.
Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Atlanta, said she and her husband struggled to place rules around phone use in their own home when their kids got them a decade ago. But schools had them doing homework on their phones, which made it difficult to enforce limits. She said she was suspicious when she read that Silicon Valley executives wouldn’t let their own kids use such devices.
“So they knew that what they were putting into kids’ hands was not good for them,” she said.
Many suggested during weeks of hearings on the bill that the cellphone ban should also include high school students.
Rep. Scott Hilton, R-Peachtree Corners, the chief sponsor of HB 340, said after Tuesday’s vote that the ban could be extended to those schools in coming years.
“Absolutely, based on the feedback that I have gotten, we do have a problem in (grades) 9 through 12, and it’s the nuance of how do we address that,” he said. “But I do imagine that in a future session we’re going to be back to think deeply about what we do in high school.”
by Ty Tagami | Mar 24, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Legislation designed to avert another school shooting like the one that left four dead at Apalachee High School last fall got a hearing in a Senate subcommittee Monday, where many expressed concerns about a database that would be built to track children deemed to be suspicious.
House Bill 268 passed the Georgia House of Representatives with wide bipartisan support earlier this month. The priority for House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican from Newington, comes to the Senate as the House encounters several school safety bills that were passed by the Senate.
The bills share some things in common, such as heightened criminality for students who make threats of bodily harm.
But HB 268 is unique in its breadth. The 65-page measure would make it a felony to threaten someone with death at a school. It would add behavioral health coordinators to school staff. And it would require school systems to create threat assessment teams, calling for better information sharing among school administrators, law enforcement and mental health counselors when a student could pose a threat to themselves or others.
The measure also would require the timely transfer of pertinent information when students transfer between schools. The 14-year-old student at Apalachee High who was arrested for the murders, Colt Gray, had just transferred from another school. It would also establish a statewide information-sharing database to track students whose behavior has raised suspicion.
It’s this last part, a multimillion-dollar behavioral threat assessment management system, to be called the School and Student Safety Database or S3 Database, that has generated the most concern.
“Big Brother surveillance of our children,” is how Sen. Shawn Still, R-Johns Creek, characterized the messages he has been getting from constituents about the bill.
Still and Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, asked most of the questions during Monday’s meeting of the subcommittee, which heard from more than a dozen speakers over more than two hours, but took no action on SB 268.
Teacher advocates praised the measure, welcoming the support that additional counselors could provide.
Others were critical of the S3 database, worrying that it would archive dumb things kids do, creating a record that could haunt them into adulthood. They feared the data would be hacked.
It “criminalizes student speech,” said Rhonda Thomas of Truth in Education, a Christian advocacy group focused on parental rights. “It’s guilty before proven innocent.”
Mazie Lynn Causey, from the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, was concerned about enhanced penalties for threats made on campus, an idea that she said was more punitive in a measure now in the House, Senate Bill 61.
Terroristic threats can be predicated on reckless conduct, she said.
“And of course children are going to act impulsively,” she said. “They can’t really help it. Their brains are not fully developed.”
Officials from the Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency (GEMHSA) minimized the impact the S3 database would have on children if they didn’t intend to do harm.
It’s meant to be preventative, they said, leading school and police personnel to intervene before a student acts.
It would be built with top security protocols to make hacking unlikely, they said. Only select personnel — school administrators, mental health specialists and police — would have access to the information. The system would likely cost more than $10 million a year, with GEMHSA recommending that data be maintained until former students reach age 25.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 21, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – President Donald Trump has nominated another Georgian to join his administration, selecting state Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, for U.S. Treasurer.
The role is a senior leadership position within the U.S. Treasury Department, led by Secretary Scott Bessent. The Treasurer oversees the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and the United States Mint.
Beach has been a steadfast Trump supporter, questioning the outcome of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia and the conduct of Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in her criminal case against Trump and his allies.
Beach chairs the Senate Economic Development and Tourism Committee, and he works as executive director of True North 400, previously known as the North Fulton Community Improvement District.
He is a former president of the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce and served as a board member of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce.
Beach’s background makes him uniquely qualified for the Treasury post, said Georgia Chamber President and CEO Chris Clark, who called Beach an expert on monetary and economic policy.
“Senator Beach will bring his strong business mindset to the Treasury Department, ensuring it remains an efficient government agency,” Clark said.
Beach was among a group of Republican state lawmakers who called for a special session of the General Assembly to consider changes to Georgia’s voter ID laws after Joe Biden’s presidential win in 2020.
He also backed a Senate GOP push to investigate Willis and her conduct of the investigation into Trump and his supporters amid allegations that Willis had improper involvement with the special prosecutor on the case.
Trump has often turned to Georgia for leaders. Former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins was recently sworn in as Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler was sworn in to lead the Small Business Administration.
In Trump’s first term, he picked former Gov. Sonny Perdue, now chancellor of the University System of Georgia, to lead the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Rep. Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.
