by Dave Williams | Feb 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The justices on the Georgia Supreme Court have unanimously elected Presiding Justice Nels S.D. Peterson to be the state’s next chief justice.
Peterson will assume his new role after March 31, when the resignation of current Chief Justice Michael Boggs takes effect.
Boggs announced earlier this week that he was leaving the bench to resume private practice in his hometown of Waycross.
Peterson was appointed to the state Supreme Court in 2016 by then-Gov. Nathan Deal and was elected to full six-year terms in 2018 and last year.
He previously served in a variety of other roles in state government, including as a judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals, general counsel for the University System of Georgia, Georgia’s first solicitor general in the Attorney General’s Office, and executive counsel to the governor.
The chief justice in Georgia serves one four-year term, acting as the spokesperson both for the court and the entire state judiciary as well as presiding over the court’s oral arguments.
With Peterson moving up to the top role on the high court, the justices also unanimously elected Justice Sarah Hawkins Warren as the next presiding justice.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
The Georgia House of Representatives on Thursday adopted its own version of legislation that would limit transgender student competition in school sports, making the final passage of a law on the topic more likely after a similar bill passed the Senate earlier this month.
House Bill 267 was approved 102-54, with a couple of Democrats crossing party lines to vote with Republicans for passage. It would open schools and colleges to lawsuits for allowing transgender athletes born male to compete against girls and women.
The measure, like Senate Bill 1, which the Senate adopted in a near party-line vote the first week of February, would also prohibit transgender students born male from using locker rooms designated for females.
House Republicans called HB 276 a “common sense” measure that protects girls from more powerful transgender athletes and reinforces a binary division of the sexes.
Democrats excoriated Republicans for a “weird” obsession with a group of people who comprise a tiny fraction of the population, attributing their motive to “hate” and to pandering to conservative Christian voters.
The legislation addresses more than sports: it would replace the word “gender” with the word “sex” throughout most of Georgia’s law books.
Democrats asserted this would “erase” transgender people, removing legal protections.
“It is a calculated, dangerous, deeply discriminatory piece of legislation that goes far beyond the realm of athletics,” said Rep. Karla Drenner, D-Avondale Estates. “Let’s call this the Erasure of Transgender Georgians Act.”
Drenner called the concerns raised about transgender athletes in sport a “manufactured crisis by the most extreme factions of the Republican Party.”
Republicans said they had addressed concerns about hate crimes against transgender people with an amendment that kept the term “gender” in that part of the law.
GOP lawmakers responded to the accusation of playing politics by saying transgender athletes are a real threat to girls and women.
Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, reacted in kind to the allegation that her party was obsessed with a non-issue by saying it was “weird” that collegiate swimming champion Riley Gaines was defeated by a transgender athlete at an NCAA competition at Georgia Tech in 2022.
HB 267 is named the Riley Gaines Act because of that much-publicized incident.
“We’re just trying to keep biological males from slide tackling our daughters on the soccer field,” Ehrhart said.
Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, a former school superintendent and the chairman of the House Education Committee, called it a “measured, reasonable and necessary response to growing concerns.”
Gaines testified for HB 267 at a hearing in Erwin’s committee last week. She said via Zoom that she’d learned from other women about transgender athletes dominating their competitions, too, but she didn’t go into detail.
Democrats on Thursday countered that if transgender athletes were a significant problem for female sports, Republicans wouldn’t have had to name their bill after an out-of-state athlete.
Gaines swam for the University of Kentucky.
by Dave Williams | Feb 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The state Senate unanimously passed a narrowly tailored tort reform bill Thursday, a week after approving broader, more controversial legislation encompassing most of a civil justice system overhaul Gov. Brian Kemp has made his top priority for 2025.
Senate Bill 69, which cleared the Senate 52-0, is aimed at third-party financing of lawsuits, where financiers who are not a party to a case pay the costs of pursuing litigation in exchange for a portion of any judgement a plaintiff is awarded.
Third-party litigation financing has become a growing concern across the nation, particularly as many are funded through foreign adversaries including China and Russia, Senate President Pro Tempore John Kennedy, the bill’s chief sponsor, said on the Senate floor Thursday.
“This is a consumer protection measure,” said Kennedy, R-Macon. “It is insuring that plaintiffs … are not taken advantage of by bad actors.”
Rather than abolish third-party litigation financing, the bill establishes guardrails to protect plaintiffs entering into such arrangements.
The legislation would prohibit third-party financiers from recovering any awards that are greater than what the plaintiff receives. Contracts between plaintiffs and third-party financiers would have to be in writing and would be subject to cancellation.
Third-party financiers would have to register with the state, and the bill would put limits on foreign adversaries becoming financiers.
Kennedy warned that foreign parties could steal American intellectual property by entering into litigation financing agreements.
“It gives them a foothold into our civil justice system that could give them access to information they otherwise wouldn’t be able to have,” he said. “Think data. Think technology.”
The bill now heads to the Georgia House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, the broader bill senators passed last week also now rests with the House.
Senate Bill 68, which passed last Friday primarily along party lines, includes an array of provisions aimed at reining in “runaway” jury awards in civil lawsuits. Kemp and Republican lawmakers blame lawsuits for raising insurance premiums so high that businesses have been forced to lay off workers or close their doors.
by Dave Williams | Feb 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia House of Representatives voted unanimously Thursday to codify into state law the right of women seeking to become pregnant to receive in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment.
House Bill 428 was prompted by a ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court last year that declared frozen embryos created through IVF should be treated as children. The decision essentially banned the procedure in that state until Alabama lawmakers passed a bill protecting IVF.
“This bill does not change anything that’s not currently being done in Georgia,” Rep. Lehman Franklin, R-Statesboro, said Thursday.
Franklin has a personal interest in the legislation. His wife, Lorie, who he introduced to his House colleagues, has become pregnant through IVF treatment and is due to deliver a daughter in June.
Republicans and Democrats came to the House well to endorse the bill.
“Every family deserves the opportunity to bring new life into this world when they’re ready,” said Rep. Esther Panitch, D-Sandy Springs.
“It is critical legally to protect this right,” added Rep. Deborah Silcox, a Republican who is also from Sandy Springs.
House Speaker Jon Burns, who made protecting IVF one of his top priorities for the 2025 General Assembly session, issued a statement after Thursday’s 172-0 vote in favor of the bill thanking House members for their support.
“I’m incredibly proud of today’s passage of HB 428, which ensures Georgians struggling with infertility will never have to question their ability to seek medical assistance with starting or growing their families,” said Burns, R-Newington.
The bill now moves to the state Senate.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
People caught with a quarter gram of fentanyl would face one to five years in prison if a measure that passed the Georgia Senate Wednesday goes on to become law.
It’s a tiny amount, but it’s enough to kill 120 people, said Sen. Russ Goodman, R-Cogdell, in explaining why he sponsored Senate Bill 79.
The measure, which gained approval in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, would lower the threshold prison time based on the amount of the drug possessed.
Under the bill, possession of a quarter gram to four grams could draw a decade in prison. Also, the mandatory minimum prison sentence for trafficking would be much higher than for the same amount of a traditional drug, such as cocaine or heroin.
“If other illegal drugs are a BB gun, fentanyl is a nuclear bomb,” Goodman said. “I say that to say, if you look at the numbers, the people that were killed combined at the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima roughly equals the amount of Americans that die every year from fentanyl.”
A couple hundred thousand were killed by those atomic bombs, while the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency estimates about 107,000 overdose deaths from all drugs in 2023. Still, fentanyl poses an unprecedented threat because trace amounts can be fatal.
Gus and Beth Walters from Valdosta lost their son, Austin, four years ago at the age of 30 when he took a Xanax laced with fentanyl. In their grief, they emailed Goodman hoping to make something meaningful from his death.
Last year, the General Assembly passed Austin’s Law, which makes it a felony to manufacture or sell any substance containing fentanyl that causes a death.
“It’s really healed a wound for us that is deep,” Gus Walters said Wednesday after SB 79 passed 50-3. The bill now goes to the state House of Representatives, which last year amended the Senate’s version of Austin’s Law to exempt manslaughter that resulted from mere possession, noted Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs.
McLaurin and two other Democrats were among the three senators who voted against SB 79. He explained ahead of his vote that he was concerned that the legislation would send people to prison for mere possession and not just for trafficking.
“When you criminalize possession, you are criminalizing addiction … which is a mental health problem, it is a disease,” he said, adding that prison isn’t a great place to overcome addiction. He likened the measure to the War on Drugs in the late 20th century, which was criticized for overwhelming America’s prisons.
Goodman noted that SB 79 only would require mandatory minimum sentencing for possession of four or more grams, which he said is in the realm of trafficking. Judges could order suspended sentences or probation for convictions involving lower amounts, he said.
Gus Walters said after the vote that he’d rather his son had been convicted and jailed than lying in a grave. Beth Walters said the couple believe in addiction recovery.
“We are not saying that you should not have recovery programs. What we’re trying to do is to save lives so they can get to recovery,” she said. “We keep going down the road we’re going down right now. We’re not going to have anybody left to send to recovery.”
McLaurin said he hopes the House does to SB 79 what it did to Austin’s Law last year, downplaying the legal consequences for possession.
by Dave Williams | Feb 26, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate overwhelmingly passed a record $40.5 billion mid-year state budget Wednesday that prioritizes disaster relief, infrastructure needs, and prisons.
The 190-page document covering state spending through June 30, which cleared the Senate 51-1, includes $750 million to help Georgians recover from what Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Blake Tillery called last year’s “cantankerous” weather. The Peach State suffered two hurricanes, a tornado, three days with 10 inches or more of rainfall, and two 40-day droughts.
To increase disaster relief funding from the $615 million Gov. Brian Kemp requested in the mid-year budget he presented to the General Assembly last month, the Senate cut spending in other areas. Many of those reductions were made possible by delays in filling budgeted positions or holding off on building projects that have been funded but haven’t begun construction.
“We’ve got to deal with a problem right in front of us first, and that’s storm relief,” said Tillery, R-Vidalia.
The Senate supported Kemp’s recommendation for $501 million to increase surface water supplies in Coastal Georgia to supply the Hyundai electric-vehicle manufacturing plant now under construction west of Savannah. Another $200 million is earmarked for water and sewer improvement projects elsewhere in the state.
Also on the infrastructure front, the Senate mid-year budget set aside $500 million for the state Department of Transportation’s Freight and Logistics program, a series of highway improvements aimed at speeding up the movement of freight. Another $53 million earmarked for the Georgia Transportation Infrastructure Bank would provide funding to local communities that apply for road improvement projects in their areas.
Senators also endorsed the governor’s request for an additional $50 million in school-safety grants, enough to provide every school in Georgia with nearly $70,000. School districts are being given the flexibility to spend those dollars on security improvements as they see fit.
The Senate agreed with Kemp’s proposal to hire more than 400 additional correctional officers to staff state prisons. More guards are needed to improve security inside a prison system that a federal audit criticized last fall for failing to protect inmates from widespread violence.
The Senate’s mid-year budget and a version of the spending plan the state House adopted earlier this month also would provide $30 million to design a new prison, $10 million less than the governor recommended.
Senators also zeroed out funding to replace QR codes from election ballots, choosing to redirect that money to other priorities.
Among those priorities is addressing a shortage of physicians, particularly in rural South Georgia. Senators earmarked $25 million for the Mercer University School of Medicine and the same amount for the Morehouse School of Medicine to expand their medical residency programs, with a focus on communities south of the Fall Line Freeway running from Augusta to Columbus via Macon.
“Where doctors do their residency, they are more likely to stay,” Tillery said.
Besides increasing spending in various priority areas, the Senate also put its stamp of approval on Kemp’s plan to dip into the state’s $16 billion budget surplus to bankroll a $1 billion income tax rebate for Georgia taxpayers. Single tax filers will receive $250, single filer heads of households will get $375, and married couples filing jointly will receive $500.
