A protest against Georgia’s abortion ban outside the state Capitol. (Photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – The state Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a case challenging a Georgia law banning most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
The General Assembly passed – and Gov. Brian Kemp signed – the LIFE Act (House Bill 481) in 2019. The law bans most abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected with exceptions in the case of rape, incest and medical emergencies.
Federal courts blocked the law from taking effect for several years. But after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion by overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision last June, a federal judge allowed the Georgia law to take effect.
Opponents of the measure – led by reproductive rights group SisterSong – then took their fight to state court. Last November, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled the Georgia law had been void from the start because it violated the U.S. Constitution as it stood in 2019, when Georgia’s abortion ban was enacted.
Republican state Attorney General Chris Carr and his team appealed that ruling, giving rise to the Georgia Supreme Court case heard on Tuesday. Soon after, the state Supreme Court ruled that the law could take effect in Georgia while litigation was pending, meaning that most abortions after six weeks are currently banned in Georgia.
“The LIFE Act engenders strong policy views, but there is nothing controversial or difficult about the legal question before this court, which is simply whether an erroneous, overruled judicial opinion can invalidate a state statute,” Stephen Petrany argued for the attorney general’s office.
“Because the LIFE Act would be valid if enacted today, under the exact same federal Constitution, it was valid when it was enacted [in 2019],” Petrany added.
In contrast, lawyers for the groups challenging the law countered that the law was void when the state legislature passed it and therefore should be deemed invalid, despite the subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
“When the legislature passes a law that is in violation of the Constitution, it is an overstep of their authority to do so,” Julia Stone argued.
“This is not a case where there was gray area … in 2019,” Stone added. “For 50 years, the rule was states could not ban abortions before the point of viability, and when the General Assembly passed HB 481 and sought to ban abortions … [that] had been perfectly clear for 50 years. [The state legislature] directly conflicted with that precedent.”
At a post-hearing press conference in front of the Supreme Court, Stone noted that if the law is struck down, Georgia lawmakers could enact another abortion ban but would have to do so in the new legal and political environment created by the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The Supreme Court is likely to issue a decision in the case by this summer. The South Carolina Supreme Court in January found that state’s similar abortion law unconstitutional under state law.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
ATLANTA – Local elections offices in Georgia would not be allowed to accept donations from private sources to help run their operations under a Republican-backed bill that has passed the state House of Representatives.
Senate Bill 222 cleared the lower chamber along party lines 100-69 late Monday night, the last bill lawmakers took up in a marathon next-to-last day of this year’s legislative session.
The legislation stems from complaints from Republicans in Georgia and other states about private donations flowing into elections offices in Democratic counties, notably a $350 million contribution by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to the nonprofit Center for Technology and Civic Life during the 2020 election.
“It’s common sense for us to make sure we’re banning private money from public elections,” said Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, who carried the bill in the House.
But House Democrats said cutting off local elections offices from access to grants from private nonprofits would leave already resource-poor county elections officials ill equipped to deal with thousands of challenges to voters’ qualifications out-of-state groups have been filing since the 2020 elections.
“The primary intent of these challenges is to gum up the works … to divert elections workers from their duties,” said Rep. Saira Draper, D-Atlanta. “Counties will be cut off from the funds they need to do their jobs.”
Draper said banning local governments from accepting private donations would leave the State Election Board in charge of allocating funds to all 159 Georgia counties, a blow to local control.
“Why do we presume the State Election Board knows what our counties need better than our counties?” she asked.
Because of changes the House made to the bill, it now heads back to the Senate, which must act on it before the General Assembly adjourns for the year on Wednesday night if it is to become law.
Georgia Sen. Carden Summers (Photo credit: Rebecca Grapevine)
ATLANTA – Georgia cities and counties must enforce local ordinances prohibiting homeless people from camping and sleeping in public arenas under legislation that has gained final passage in the General Assembly.
The Republican-controlled state Senate passed the bill Monday night, voting 32-24 primarily along party lines, and sent it on to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature. The Senate vote came a few hours after the Georgia House of Representatives passed the bill 99-76.
“We know that street camps are dangerous for homeless people themselves,” Rep. Katie Dempsey, R-Rome, who carried Senate Bill 62 in the House, told her legislative colleagues. “The cities that have allowed it have seen an increase in the number of homeless deaths.”
Democrats spoke out against the bill, particularly a late addition the House inserted prohibiting local governments and hospitals from dumping homeless people in other counties.
“Bills like this criminalize homelessness,” said Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn. “We need bills that address the root causes of homelessness.”
Democrats also accused Republicans of stomping on the concept of local control.
But Dempsey and other GOP lawmakers said the provision requiring local governments to enforce their ordinances against public camping and sleeping only applies if they have such ordinances.
“Local governments need to enforce the laws they have on their books. It’s that simple,” said Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens.
“We want to ensure that cities in this state don’t become more like Los Angeles and Austin, Texas,” added House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman John LaHood, R-Valdosta, referring to those cities’ problems with homeless encampments.
When the bill got to the Senate side Monday night, Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, complained that the original intent of the legislation was limited to requiring a state audit of the government funding available to address homelessness.
“Once we have a full audit, we can make some calculated decisions on how to use that money,” she said.
But Sen. Carden Summers, R-Cordele, Senate Bill 62’s chief sponsor, said the issue of homelessness can’t wait for an audit. Summers chaired a Senate study committee on homelessness last summer and fall.
“Every person we interviewed said homeless is getting worse and worse and worse,” he said. “Each county must deal with homeless. Each county has to have a plan to deal with homeless.
ATLANTA – The General Assembly voted largely along party lines Monday to create an oversight board for Georgia’s district attorneys and solicitors general.
The Republican-backed Senate Bill 92 passed in the Georgia House of Representatives 97-77 over the objections of House Democrats that the measure both isn’t needed and is being driven by politics. The state Senate followed suit a few hours later, giving the bill final passage 32-24.
The legislation, which now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk, would create the Prosecuting Attorneys Oversight Commission, an eight-member board that would investigate complaints lodged against prosecutors and hold hearings.
The panel would have the power to discipline or remove prosecutors on a variety of grounds including mental or physical incapacity, willful misconduct or failure to perform the duties of the office, conviction of a crime of moral turpitude, or conduct that brings the office into disrepute.
Republicans have complained during the last several years about prosecutors in Democratic-led cities in Georgia who have been reluctant to prosecute certain crimes, notably during the civil unrest that occurred following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis by a white police officer in 2020.
“This bill was brought because we have district attorneys who are not doing their jobs,” said state Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens.
Republican lawmakers also argued that – unlike judges, who are subject to Georgia’s Judicial Qualifications Commission – there is no oversight board for prosecutors.
But Democrats countered that there are existing remedies for removing wayward prosecutors, including Georgia Bar Association rules, indictment by the state attorney general, impeachment, and ultimately elections.
Rep. Tanya Miller, D-Atlanta, accused Republicans of political motivations in pushing the bill.
“This is a power grab by the majority party to usurp the will of the voters,” she said.
But Rep. Matt Reeves, R-Duluth, said the current remedies to remove prosecutors are difficult to pursue. For example, the state bar isn’t equipped for the types of investigations that would be required of a district attorney who is the subject of a complaint, he said.
Florida has created an oversight board to discipline prosecutors who have refused to enforce state law, Reeves said.
“We don’t want to have prosecutorial veto of the laws we enact,” he said.
ATLANTA – A bill that seeks to fix the problems that have long plagued Georgia’s medical marijuana program is a step closer to passing the General Assembly.
The state Senate voted 53-3 in favor of legislation the House passed earlier this month, but with a series of substantive changes that will force it to return to the House before it can gain final passage.
The state commission that runs the program was created back in 2019. But it took the agency until last year to award the first two licenses to companies to grow marijuana in Georgia and convert the leafy crop to low-THC cannabis oil for patients suffering from a range of diseases.
“It took us years and year for the commission to get organized, get its rules together … and award licenses,” Senate Regulated Industries Committee Chairman Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, told his Senate colleagues Monday. “All that time, the frustration has boiled.”
The awarding of licenses hasn’t ended the difficulty in getting the program off the ground. Four additional licenses beyond the first two are being held up by lawsuits filed by nine companies that lost bids for those licenses and are challenging the procurement process as legally flawed.
As passed by the House, the bill sought to move the program forward by expanding the number of licenses from six to 15, which would have allowed the nine protesters to compete for licenses if they agreed to drop their lawsuits.
But the Senate committee balked at the idea of rewarding those companies for filing lawsuits when other losing bidders did not take their cases to court.
Senators became convinced that expanding the number of licenses isn’t necessary at this time because each of the two companies already licensed have given assurances they can supply enough cannabis oil to treat 300,000 patients, while the state’s registry of patients eligible for the drug numbers fewer than 30,000.
The Senate version of the bill includes triggers for increasing the number of licenses the state awards as the number of patients on the registry grows.
“It takes a little bit of the politics out of it and gets it into a common-sense bracket,” said Sen. Matt Brass, R-Newnan, who chaired a legislative study committee on medical cannabis in 2018.
The Senate also added a provision to the legislation calling on the Georgia Department of Agriculture to examine how the medical cannabis commission has handled its oversight duties and make recommendations by Dec. 1. The commission has absorbed the brunt of the criticism for the delays to the program.
Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, sponsored a bill banning TikTok on state-owned devices.
ATLANTA – The state Senate unanimously approved a bill Monday to codify a ban on the use of TikTok on state-owned devices.
“Hopefully, we will see the federal government and other states follow Georgia’s lead,” said Sen. Jason Anavitarte, R-Dallas, the bill’s sponsor.
Senate Bill 93 would codify into state law Gov. Brian Kemp’s directive last year prohibiting the use of TikTok, a highly popular video hosting service that runs user-submitted videos, and other similar applications on state-owned devices.
TikTok is owned by a Chinese company, Byte Dance, and there is concern that its ties to the Chinese government could expose sensitive state data to a foreign government.
“It only takes one computer and one device to make us vulnerable,” Anavitarte told a state House committee earlier this month. “The concern [is] …foreign adversaries having ownership [of social media platforms] and the security concerns on government devices.”
The bill would also apply to similar social media platforms that are directly or indirectly owned by foreign adversaries.
However, the bill provides exceptions for law-enforcement investigations, cybersecurity research and for other governmental purposes.
Georgia joins at least 25 other states that have banned TikTok on state-owned devices.
The federal government has already banned the application on government-owned devices. Congress held a lengthy hearing on the matter last week that featured an appearance by TikTok CEO Shou Chew. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has introduced legislation that would ban the app entirely.
The Georgia bill now heads to Kemp’s desk for his signature.
This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.
