by Ty Tagami | May 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – It will remain illegal for people under 21 to carry a handgun in most public places in Georgia after the state Supreme Court upheld state limits on the right to bear arms.
In a unanimous decision issued Wednesday, the high court ruled against Thomas Stephens, a 20-year-old who sued after Lumpkin County denied his application for a license to carry a handgun.
Georgia’s Constitution says the right to bear arms “shall not be infringed,” but also gives the state legislature the authority to “prescribe the manner” in which weapons may be carried.
The justices concurred that this “manner clause” was intended to qualify or limit the right to carry a weapon in Georgia.
Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr’s office defended that interpretation, but a lawyer for Stephens argued that Georgia’s restrictions are rooted in a time before the U.S. Supreme Court began applying a higher standard against government intrusion into personal liberties, starting around World War II.
The federal high court developed a standard of “strict scrutiny” and began requiring that burdens on fundamental rights be justified by a “compelling” state interest, Stephens’ attorney, John R. Monroe, said during oral arguments last month.
“Strict scrutiny should be applied to this case because it’s a fundamental right for people to keep and bear arms,” Monroe said.
However, the opinion authored by Justice Andrew A. Pinson said Stephens and his attorney were asking the justices to “import” federal standards to guide their interpretation of the state constitution, “a practice we have regularly criticized and disapproved.”
The opinion also observed that the state Supreme Court has previously backed legal restrictions on where guns are allowed, for instance upholding a law that banned them in churches and courts.
State laws are presumed to be constitutional and the burden to prove otherwise is a “heavy one,” Pinson wrote.
“Stephens fails to meet that heavy burden here,” he added.
by Ty Tagami | May 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – A state agency created two decades ago to hold Georgia public schools accountable for student performance will have a new interim leader.
Gov. Brian Kemp’s policy director will take over as the interim executive director of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement following the retirement of executive director Joy Hawkins, who served in the role for a half dozen years, Kemp’s office said Tuesday.
Ian Caraway is “uniquely qualified” for the role due to his “insight on the pressing needs facing Georgia students, along with his partnership approach to the various education agencies of our state,” Kemp said.
The agency, called GOSA, was founded under Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes, and the three Republican governors who followed him in office have kept it operational.
Some see the agency as duplicative of the Georgia Department of Education, while others see it as a public-facing window into the performance of public schools.
GOSA produces an annual school report card and other analyses using data from the state education department. It also analyzes trends and shares its findings with the public.
Lawmakers often call on the agency for special tasks. For instance, they gave GOSA the responsibility for determining which schools were among the lowest performers under legislation that created a new private school voucher program. Families zoned for those schools are eligible for the funding, called a “Promise Scholarship.” GOSA drew criticism when it had to recalculate the list due to problems with the data.
Caitlan Coleman, a Kemp staffer, will fill Caraway’s policy role in the governor’s office on an interim basis.
by Ty Tagami | May 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – More students have been skipping school since the COVID-19 pandemic, and Georgia lawmakers are looking into the problem.
A leading state Senate Republican announced Tuesday that he is forming a committee on the issue. Sen. John F. Kennedy, R-Macon, will also chair the new Study Committee on Combating Chronic Absenteeism in Schools.
Kennedy, the Senate’s president pro tempore, credited the chamber’s leader, Republican Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, with prioritizing the issue.
“Thanks to his support, this new study committee will help us dig deeper into the root causes of absenteeism,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy was the chief co-sponsor of Senate Bill 123, which Gov. Brian Kemp signed last month. It amends Georgia’s compulsory attendance law for students ages 6 through 15, with chronic absenteeism defined as missing 10% or more of the school year. That law already requires superior court judges to establish and oversee student attendance and school climate committees in each county.
When it takes effect in July, SB 123 will require attendance review teams in each school system where 10% or more of the students were chronically absent and in each school where at least 15% were chronically absent.
SB 123 also adds a requirement that the Georgia Department of Education publish biannual reports on compliance with the law and on attendance rates.
The education department already publishes attendance rates, and the percentage of students missing school has climbed sharply since before the pandemic, when 12% of students qualified as chronically absent.
The rate fell briefly to 8% in 2020, when Kemp ordered schools to close their doors.
But chronic absenteeism surged to 20.1% in 2021, when schools adapted to the pandemic, with some operating online while others returned in person.
The percentage of chronically absent students climbed to 23.9% in 2022 before settling to 21.3% last year.
That means more than 370,000 Georgia students missed at least 10% of the 2024 school year.
Rates varied by district though, from 43.0% chronically absent in Crisp County to 5.1% in Wilkinson County.
by Ty Tagami | May 23, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers quietly rolled back half the closures of recreational areas it had announced around Lake Lanier this week after public pushback from Georgia’s congressional delegation.
U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick, R-Suwanee, drew attention to the closures when he issued a statement Wednesday saying he was disappointed to learn about them ahead of the busy Memorial Day weekend, noting the lake draws more than 10 million visitors a year.
Meanwhile, Georgia’s two Democratic U.S. senators were blaming the administration of President Donald Trump, with Sen. Raphael Warnock attributing the closures to “reckless cuts,” and Sen. Jon Ossoff calling them “a direct and predictable result” of “reckless and chaotic mismanagement.”
The Army Corps triggered the barrage with an announcement Wednesday that it was temporarily shuttering parks and public use facilities at waterways in Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, blaming “staffing shortages.”
The announcement included 20 sites at Lake Lanier, two at Allatoona Lake, one along Lake George W. Andrews southwest of Blakely, and a public shoreline area along the 240-mile Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River system.
On Thursday, the agency seemed to reverse course with another announcement that listed only 10 closures at Lake Lanier, or 11 depending upon how one counts the facilities. (The Thursday announcement listed as separate facilities two sites that would remain: Van Pugh North and Van Pugh South. The Wednesday announcement had listed them as one site.)
Warnock took some credit for the reversal, issuing a statement that said the Army Corps had scaled back the closures “following pressure” from him and Georgia families.
His office also took issue with McCormick’s suggestion that Democrats were partially responsible for the closures, even though Republicans control the federal government.
McCormick had said Democrats blocked an appropriations bill in the House of Representatives last year that would have prevented campground closures around Lake Lanier. Warnock’s office then noted that Republicans also controlled the House last year.
On Wednesday, McCormick said he was working with the Army Corps to find a solution before Memorial Day. On Friday, he merely shared the Army Corps’ update on X, without further comment.
by Ty Tagami | May 22, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Groups that promote access to abortion and medical services for Black women said Thursday that uncertainty about Georgia’s abortion restrictions were to blame for the decision to keep a brain dead, pregnant woman on life support.
Georgia’s so-called “heartbeat” law bans abortion once cardiac activity is detected in a fetus, typically six weeks into pregnancy.
There are exceptions for rape, incest and risk to the mother’s life, but the law, established by Gov. Brian Kemp’s signature on House Bill 481 in 2019, is silent about the situation that befell the family of Adriana Smith, who was reportedly placed on life support while pregnant after being declared brain dead.
“Just because HB 481 doesn’t explicitly mandate these devastating outcomes does not mean that anti-abortion politicians can wash their hands of responsibility,” said Aleo Pugh, who manages communications in Georgia for Unite for Reproductive & Gender Equity.
“Abortion bans like HB 481 don’t just outlaw care, they intentionally create fear and confusion in moments when urgency and clarity are needed. Providers are made to second guess what care is legal,” added Pugh, who was among several advocates who were critical of Georgia’s law during a news conference Thursday.
HB 481 drew bitter resistance from Democrats as Republican lawmakers pushed it through the General Assembly. On Tuesday, state Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, D-Duluth, sent Kemp a letter urging him to seek a legal opinion from Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr on what she called “the dangerously vague provisions” of the heartbeat law.
“Physicians and hospital administrators across Georgia are watching this developing situation closely, wary of being arrested for violating our abortion law if they provide medical care to mothers, or for violating its ‘fetal personhood’ provision if they make a reasonable medical judgment,” she wrote.
The senator’s letter said she wrote Carr last Friday seeking a legal opinion but hadn’t heard back. She noted that a statement his spokesperson gave to news outlets saying the law doesn’t require life support for a brain-dead pregnant woman “does not establish or interpret policy and does not carry the force of law.”
Kemp’s office on Thursday declined to comment about the law, referring to Carr’s statement.
WXIA-TV reported last week about Smith’s situation, quoting her mother as saying the medical decisions about her daughter should have been left to the family.
