by Ty Tagami | Mar 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
Georgia courts would have to give more weight to religious custom and preference when applying the law in disputes about individual rights if legislation adopted by the Republican-led state Senate Tuesday becomes law.
The Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which passed 32-23 along party lines, reignites a fight in the General Assembly dating back a decade.
In 2016, lawmakers passed another such measure over objections by civil rights groups that it threatened the state’s LGBTQ community. Business organizations fretted over the risk of convention and sporting event boycotts, and then-Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed the bill.
The current iteration, Senate Bill 36, says government “shall not substantially burden” a person’s exercise of religion except “in furtherance of a compelling government interest.”
Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, the chief sponsor, said the need is demonstrated by examples from other states that already have such a law — of a Native American youth who wanted to wear his hair long though the school wanted him to cut it and of a Muslim woman who refused to remove her veil for a photo in front of men while applying for a driver’s license.
The boy got to keep his locks, and the woman got her photo taken by a female photographer in a room with no men present, Setzler said, explaining that the courts had to balance their religious rights against local and state policies.
“People from all of your communities, no matter where you come from, need this basic protection in place,” Setzler said.
The vast majority of states have one of these religious freedom laws but nearly all of them have coupled such laws with anti-discrimination mandates, said Sen. Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta.
If SB 36 were to pass without civil rights protections, he said, hotels and restaurants could refuse to serve LGBTQ patrons, pharmacists could withhold birth control or HIV medicines for religious reasons, a venue could decline to host a Jewish wedding, and a landlord could deny housing to an unmarried couple.
Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, said SB 36 would allow businesses to use religion as a reason to deny service to him, his husband and their two children.
“This isn’t about politics for me,” he said. “It’s about the ability for my family to live freely in this state.”
The measure now moves to the Georgia House of Representatives, which declined to consider a similar Senate measure last year.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 3, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
The Georgia Senate adopted a measure Monday that prohibits the state from providing medical care to inmates seeking to change their sex.
Senate Bill 185 passed 37-15, with support from a handful of Democrats. No Republican voted against it.
The Georgia Department of Corrections must provide medical care to inmates, but Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, the chief sponsor of the measure, said there should be limits.
SB 185 “says that we will not do surgery to change someone’s sex,” he said.
The legislation would also prohibit hormone replacement therapy, which Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta, said was “cruel and unnecessary.”
Parent said she agreed that taxpayers should not have to pay for gender-change surgery for prisoners, but she offered an amendment to allow inmates to continue with hormone replacement therapy they were taking prior to incarceration.
Her amendment failed. She was among four Democrats to then vote for SB 185 along with Republicans, illustrating the political challenge highlighted by one Republican, Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell. He said before the vote that to oppose the measure would be to demonstrate concern for convicts over victims. “If you vote against this bill, you are politically tone deaf,” he said.
Transgender people are a fraction of the population yet have been the subject of numerous bills this year. In prior weeks, the Senate and House of Representatives each adopted their own version of legislation that would prevent transgender student athletes born male from competing against females.
Earlier in the day on Monday, the Senate adopted a measure that would strip doctors and hospitals of their medical licenses if they administered puberty blockers to minors. Puberty blockers are hormone suppressants commonly used by youths who want to change their gender.
Sen. Nikki Merritt, D-Grayson, said Republicans were attempting to score political points by picking on marginalized people.
“I believe this is what, the fourth or fifth trans bill we’ve seen this session,” she said. “We get it. You hate trans people.” She didn’t participate in the votes for the amendment or the bill itself.
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, said the state gives medical care to inmates who injure themselves while committing a crime because it’s a moral obligation. Inexpensive hormone pills are no different, she said. She urged her colleagues to oppose SB 185 “as a commitment to your humanity” before she voted against it herself.
SB 185 now goes to the Georgia House of Representatives.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 3, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
The Georgia Senate adopted a measure Monday that would strip librarians of their decades-old shield from prosecution for violating a law against giving children pornography and other materials deemed obscene.
Librarians have been exempted from Georgia’s “harmful to minors” law since the mid-1980s. Republican state senators have been trying to remove that exemption for several years.
The party-line 32-23 vote to pass Senate Bill 74 followed a partisan debate about free speech.
“It is a bill designed to protect children,” said Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania, the chief sponsor of the measure. He said Georgia is one of four states that exempt librarians from obscene materials laws.
Burns said bookstores enjoy no such exemption and must filter questionable materials from children’s sections. Trained librarians should be expected to do the same, he said.
SB 74 “requires all Georgians to follow Georgia law. I don’t get an exemption. You don’t get an exemption.”
Democrats said the measure seeks to pressure librarians into more conservative judgments about whether content is obscene.
“It would criminalize librarians simply for doing their jobs,” said Sen. Elena Parent, D-Atlanta.
The bill is not about protecting children, she said. “It’s much more about censorship and fear.”
Parent noted a movement in recent years to remove classics such as “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Diary of a Young Girl” from library shelves.
Burns said the legislation doesn’t seek to ban any particular book.
“We simply ask that you put it in the right place,” he said.
SB 74 now goes to the Georgia House of Representatives.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 3, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
The Georgia Senate passed legislation Monday that would ban puberty blockers, which would affect children who want to change their gender.
Senate Bill 30 was adopted 34-19 Monday in a near party-line vote. It’s among several GOP-led bills this year addressing transgender issues.
Puberty blockers are medicines that suppress natural hormones in children, postponing puberty. Were SB 30 to become law, doctors and hospitals could lose their medical licenses for administering puberty blockers in minors.
Senate Republicans said the prohibition was needed for the safety of patients too young to consent.
Some other countries have banned puberty blockers in minors, said Sen. Ben Watson, R-Savannah, the chief sponsor of the bill. A medical doctor, Watson added that laws prohibit minors from smoking and other activities because their brains are not fully developed.
“We don’t allow minors to do a lot of things,” he said.
Watson said puberty blockers can cause long-term health impacts — to bone density, for instance.
“We’re asking them to make changes that will affect them for the rest of their lives,” he said.
Democrats said puberty blockers are reversible and that prohibiting them would expose a marginalized group to an even higher risk of suicide. They accused Republicans of pandering to a “far right” base that wishes transgender people didn’t exist.
Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, who is gay, called the measure “the othering of a minority group for political gain.”
Democrats tried unsuccessfully to amend the bill to let medical providers continue providing puberty blockers to children who are already using them.
All the votes against SB 30 were by Democrats except one. Sen. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Dawson, crossed the aisle to vote for the measure. It now moves to the state House of Representatives.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
The Republican chairman of a special committee of the Georgia Senate that has been investigating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has introduced legislation that would expand the committee’s scope to include former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.
“I think we ought to get to the bottom of these allegations,” Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, said Friday, explaining why he had introduced Senate Resolution 292 the day before.
Cowsert was referring to a settlement agreement in January between the Georgia Ethics Commission and groups founded by Abrams.
The New Georgia Project and a separate fundraising arm, the New Georgia Action Fund, agreed to pay $300,000 for failing to disclose $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in spending during the 2018 election cycle on behalf of Abrams’ unsuccessful bid for governor.
It was the largest fine ever assessed by the Ethics Commission.
Cowsert’s Special Committee on Investigations was created last year in the wake of Republican anger over Willis’ criminal case against President Donald Trump and others who helped his effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Willis has refused the Cowsert committee’s summons to testify, fighting it in court.
If the Senate passes SR 292, the committee will have the authority to expand its inquiry to the Abrams-related groups and determine if “existing state laws, including those establishing processes related to campaign finance and the operation of nonprofit organizations, are inadequate.”
Cowsert said he plans to call Abrams to testify after the legislative session ends on April 4.
His committee has no punitive powers, but Cowsert said prosecutors would likely be watching its work.
“We need to learn what’s going on out there, what’s permitted, and see if those guardrails are sufficient or not,” he said.
Democrats say it’s just a political stunt.
Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II, D-Augusta, slammed his fellow Republicans, saying they took no action in the Trump case, which briefly ensnared the Senate’s top Republican.
In 2022, a Fulton County judge disqualified Willis from prosecuting Lt Gov. Burt Jones, then a state senator, because she had hosted a fundraiser for his Democratic opponent in the lieutenant governor’s race. The case was subsequently moved to a special prosecutor, who cleared Jones of wrongdoing last fall.
The GOP senators’ proposed investigation of Abrams is just “mud and dirt,” Harold Jones said. It’s a distraction from “real issues,” such as the housing crisis, he said.
