by Ty Tagami | Jul 2, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — Shriners Children’s will establish a new pediatric medical research facility near Georgia Tech, bringing jobs and significant investment, the health-care nonprofit announced Wednesday.
Gov. Brian Kemp touted the new development as “an incredible addition to Georgia’s growing nonprofit, R&D, and life sciences communities.”
Leslie D. Stewart, chairman of the Shriners Children’s board, said the opportunity to collaborate and partner with Georgia Tech made Atlanta the clear choice for locating the new Shriners Children’s Research Institute.
The organization said it would invest more than $153 million in the new location at Science Square, across from Georgia Tech’s North Avenue Research Area.
The new facility will create 470 jobs, according to Kemp’s office, recruiting experts in gene therapies, robotics, artificial intelligence and other areas.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said the Shriners’ decision to locate the new facility in Atlanta was “a powerful commitment to healthier futures for children.” Robb Pitts, the Fulton County Commission chairman, called it a hub for innovation that will bring high-paying jobs and economic growth.
Shriners Children’s is a pediatric health-care system founded by members of the Shriners International fraternity in 1922. It focuses on orthopedic and neuromuscular conditions, burn injuries, spinal cord rehabilitation and cleft lip and palate conditions.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 30, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A hand count of ballots in a primary election race for the Georgia Public Service Commission found a discrepancy, but Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger determined it was not a problem.
The audit of results in all 159 counties for the District 2 Republican contest found one batch of 328 audited ballots had a discrepancy, but it was within an expected margin of error for a hand count, Raffensperger said Monday.
There was no deviation from candidate vote totals, he said.
“County election offices are in great hands,” he said. “Georgia’s system works. This is exactly why I’m leading the push to see our reforms instituted on a national level. This audit shows that our Georgia leads the nation in free, fair, and fast election results.”
Incumbent Republican Commissioner Tim Echols won the June 17 primary with 75.76% of the vote, easily dispatching challenger Lee Muns of Columbia County. Echols, who lives near Hoschton in the Athens area, will take on Democrat Alicia Johnson of Savannah in November.
Raffensperger, who attributed the discrepancy to human error, said the audit was supported by Voting Works and their Arlo auditing software.
Confidence in election integrity continues to be an issue among Republicans. At the state GOP convention in early June, a faction expressed discontent with party leaders when they announced that voting for party positions would be conducted with electronic “clickers” rather than the paper ballots that some wanted.
Some of the nearly 1,700 assembled delegates booed and yelled from the floor that the clickers were not working during practice votes before the real internal elections. Norine Cantor, who lost her bid for a party position, alleged that the convention was “rigged.”
by Ty Tagami | Jun 30, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A program that was intended to improve Georgia’s ranking on indicators of child “well-being” has produced mixed results, according to a state audit.
Georgia lawmakers asked for an examination of the Georgia Family Connection Partnership, which received $30 million in funding in fiscal year 2024, more than a quarter of it from the state.
The special examination by the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts found evidence of positive impact on the high school graduation and teen birth rate measures. But the agency found no evidence of a positive impact on three others: child abuse and neglect, low birthweight babies and children in poverty.
The partnership told auditors that the results should be characterized as “promising” instead of “mixed,” but the auditors disagreed, saying it would be “misleading” to do so.
“We also considered that there is limited support in the academic literature to demonstrate collaborative-type entities lead to improved outcomes,” the auditors wrote.
The review was requested by the Georgia House Appropriations Committee, which has a leading role in writing the annual state budget.
Georgia Family Connection (GFC) is a statewide initiative that was established in 1991 after Georgia ranked 48th out of 50 states on the child well-being indicators created by an organization called Kids Count.
The GFC grew as state lawmakers allocated funding. Then, in 2001, a new state-level organization called Georgia Family Connection Partnership was created. By the next year, all 159 Georgia counties had joined the partnership.
In addition to state funding — $8.3 million in fiscal 2024 — the program gets federal, local and private money.
“Although the Partnership and collaboratives receive a state appropriation, there is no statute outlining their responsibilities,” the auditors noted. They found that the partnership’s strength is also a weakness: it operates on a unique, decentralized model. This allows for local decision making but “creates challenges for ensuring impact,” the auditors wrote.
Their report makes no recommendations to state lawmakers. It notes that the program is unique in the United States, but three states have programs with similar elements: Alabama, Florida and Tennessee.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — On Tuesday, Georgians will reap what their state lawmakers sowed when a slew of new laws take effect, from divisive limits on transgender student athletes to a broadly popular guarantee to keep in vitro fertilization legal.
In addition to keeping options to start life, the General Assembly gave Georgians a new way to say goodbye to loves ones when life ends.
They addressed technology that is changing how we live, letting Georgians use a digital replica of their driver’s license on their phone during traffic stops while at the same time banning cellphones in elementary and middle schools.
They also passed laws affecting the justice system, food safety and taxes.
Senate Bill 1 was the first item on the Republican-led state Senate’s agenda. It generally prohibits student athletes in private and public schools and colleges from competing in interscholastic and intercollegiate sports on teams that do not match their birth gender.
Lawmakers spent many hours debating whether transgender athletes were a threat to the safety of girls and women during competition, and whether there were enough of them to merit a legal ban.
Democrats called it unnecessary and dangerous. Republicans called it necessary for safety, asserting that female athletes could be injured when competing against transgender opponents.
“This common-sense legislation is about what is fair and safe for our children,” said Gov. Brian Kemp, when he signed the measure into law in April. “Girls should not have to share a playing field, a restroom, or locker room with boys.”
Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said the legislation would ensure “no young woman is ever forced to face a biological male on the field, on the court or in a locker room.” It wasn’t an ideological issue, but one of “right or wrong,” he said.
Critics fear the new law will encourage bullying of transgender youths. They also worry that girls with a masculine appearance will face unwanted scrutiny. The law allows parents to challenge their gender.
“It’s legalizing discrimination,” said Lynn Green, of Rome, whose transgender son, Ash, was born female.
Green said there are no documented incidents of transgender athletes playing on Georgia school teams, but Ash, 17, corrected her.
While not interested in playing sports himself, Ash has heard about a female high school athlete who is transitioning to male. Under this law, he must still compete on a girls’ team.
“That would be stupid,” Ash said, adding, “There are definitely trans athletes in Georgia. I just don’t think they’re as big of a deal as the bill is making them. They’re not going to affect anyone. They’re not beating people up.”
There were plenty of laws that were not so controversial.
For instance, House Bill 428 passed with just one “no” vote in the Senate and no opposition in the House, as Republicans and Democrats found a rare moment of solidarity in support of protecting in vitro fertilization. The legislation was prompted by an Alabama Supreme Court ruling last year that declared frozen embryos had to be treated as children. Since some embryos are destroyed during the procedure, it was ruled illegal, raising concerns about legality in Georgia. Now, by near unanimous consent, it is clearly legal.
Read on for highlights about new laws on other important topics.
TECHNOLOGY
- House Bill 340: no more cellphones in public schools, at least from kindergarten through middle school. The proponents of this ban on devices that are widely viewed as a distraction stopped short of prohibiting them in high schools. But ban backers said high schools could be next. In the meantime, the law gives elementary and middle schools until fall 2026 to figure out how to stop their students from using their phones at school.
- House Bill 296: think of this one like chocolate meets peanut butter; nearly everyone has a smartphone and nearly everyone has a driver’s license. So why not put them together? This law goes into effect Tuesday but gives police two years to prepare. Apps to carry and read a digital license already exist. For instance, flyers can present their license in Apple Wallet at select Transportation Security Administration checkpoints. But the digital licenses are otherwise limited until July 2027, when Georgia drivers will be able to present their phones to police if they don’t have a physical license handy. Officers will not be authorized to take the phone or rifle through it, but they will have to be equipped to scan the digital license.
JUSTICE
- Senate Bill 244: this law was backed by Republicans but drew support from some Democrats. It gives money to people whom a court determines were wrongfully convicted, awarding them $75,000 per year of imprisonment. It also reimburses defendants for attorney fees and court costs when a prosecutor is disqualified due to improper conduct and the case is then dismissed. Those indicted by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in connection with her criminal case against President Donald Trump stand to benefit.
- Senate Bill 79: far too many people, young people in particular, have died because they have taken fentanyl, sometimes unknowingly. The drug is used as a painkiller in medical settings, but it has found its way to the streets — often contaminating other drugs, such as Adderall, Oxycodone and Xanax. And it is 100 times more potent than morphine. This law imposes mandatory minimum sentences on those convicted of trafficking fentanyl.
- House Bills 85 and 86: these two measures update the way judges are paid, the former striving to equalize local supplementary pay for superior court judges and the latter indexing pay for state supreme court justices, appeals court judges and a statewide business judge to what federal judges make.
- House Bill 161: this law expands the authority of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to secure subpoenas without asking a court. With the attorney general’s approval, the GBI will be able to compel telecommunications companies to turn over customer information, including name, address and connection records, such as service usage times and durations. The types of investigations that will warrant these extrajudicial subpoenas include crimes against children, crimes facilitated by a computer and, crucially when it came to securing lawmaker support, the crime known as swatting, which, according to testimony, is happening more frequently against politicians; swatting is when someone calls police to an address on false pretenses.
FOOD
- House Bill 398: home bakers and other makers, it’s time to go to market. This new “cottage food” law will allow home cooks to sell their goods online, by mail, in grocery stores and at restaurants. The food must be stable without temperature control, so refrigerated items are not included. But breads, cakes, cereals, jams, jellies, preserves, pasta, produce, dried fruits, herbs, nuts, seasonings, vinegar, dill pickles, dry soup mixes and roasted coffee beans generally are included.
- Senate Bill 144: any pesticide with a federally-approved label shall be deemed adequately labeled in Georgia and will satisfy the state law duty to label the substance.
DEATH and TAXES
- Senate Bill 241: this is another one that passed with big bipartisan majorities. It allows the composting of human corpses and inspired gallows humor at the Capitol that eased discomfort about the topic. The new law offers grieving families some measure of comfort, proponents noted: it will let them plant flowers in soil that came from a departed loved one.
- House Bills 111 and 112: the former is a tax cut and the latter is a taxpayer rebate. The cut will reduce the state income tax rate from 5.39% to 5.19% retroactive to the beginning of the current tax year. The rebate will give taxpayers a one-time bonus: $250 for single income tax filers, $375 for single filer heads of household and $500 for married couples filing jointly.
by Ty Tagami | Jun 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA — A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Thursday against enforcement of a 2024 Georgia law that sought to limit social media companies’ access to children.
The Protecting Georgia’s Children on Social Media Act sailed through the General Assembly with broad bipartisan support and was a top priority for Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.
But Amy Totenberg, a federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia, said the industry-backed plaintiff in the case was likely to prevail on claims that the law violates the First Amendment’s speech protections.
To restrict speech, the government must have a “compelling interest” that is “narrowly tailored,” the judge’s order says. But this law had “flawed tailoring,” she wrote, and it “curbs the speech rights of Georgia’s youth while imposing an immense, potentially intrusive burden on all Georgians who wish to engage in the most central computerized public forum of the twenty-first century.”
The plaintiff, a group called NetChoice, represents a who’s who of social media companies, Including Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, YouTube, Reddit, X and Pinterest.
“Free expression doesn’t end where government anxiety begins,” said Chris Marchese, NetChoice’s litigation director. “Parents — not politicians — should guide their children’s lives online and offline — and no one should have to hand over a government ID to speak in digital spaces.”
NetChoice had urged Gov. Brian Kemp to veto the bill last year, asserting that it was unconstitutional.
But Kemp signed the legislation, which required social media companies to make “commercially reasonable efforts” to verify users’ age and mandated parent consent for those under 16. It also banned advertising to children.
Supporters had cited numerous studies that found social media posed significant danger to young people, particularly girls, increasing their risk of suicide.
Among Judge Totenberg’s criticisms was the age verification provision that she said imposes “severe burdens” on all Georgians.
The judge noted that NetChoice has challenged similar laws in at least eight other states, including Texas, Ohio, Arkansas, California, Utah, Florida, Mississippi, and Tennessee.
“Nearly all of those state laws are currently enjoined on a preliminary or permanent basis,” she added.
