Georgia Supreme Court hears arguments about immunizations for children in state custody

Photo credit: Scott Housley/Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court Thursday considered whether children in temporary custody can receive routine immunizations over their parents’ objections, though recent changes to state policy may make the case moot. 

The state Department of Human Services (DHS), which oversees child welfare and foster care, sent a June 1 memo directing employees not to seek immunizations for children in temporary custody if their parents hold sincere religious objections.

In 2021, the state removed three children from their parents’ custody because of severe physical abuse by the father.

The removal was temporary, with a plan in place to eventually reunify the family after the parents met certain requirements.

The biological parents objected to their children receiving their routine childhood vaccines. They asked the Forsyth County juvenile court to stop the state from having the children immunized, claiming religious and philosophical objections.    

The juvenile court denied that request, leading to the appeal to the Supreme Court.    

Typically, parents whose children are in custody have the right to visit their children and the right to object or consent to an adoption.    

This case considered whether parents’ rights extend further such that they could direct medical or religious aspects of their children’s lives even after the children have been removed from custody.   

“If the state is doing certain things to protect the best interests of the child that… to others may have a really important religious overlay [such as immunization]: that collision is why we’re here,” said Justice Sarah Hawkins Warren.    

While the removal from custody was only temporary, immunizations are irreversible, the lawyer for the parents, David Hume, contended.    

“Parents expect…their rights to be fully restored at end of temporary custody…and that includes the right to direct the religious upbringing of their children and the right to object to vaccinating their children,” Hume said.    

“If the children are vaccinated…over the religious objections of the parents, then that right will be lost forever,” Hume added.    

 But once children have been removed from their parents’ custody, parents retain very limited rights to decide what is in the children’s best interests, argued Stephen Petrany, the Georgia solicitor general, on behalf of the Department of Human Services, which oversees foster care.   

“The parents have been deemed unfit because their children were being abused,” Petrany said. “The parental rights, the [religious] liberty right … is dependent on their being fit parents.”

“DFCS (The Georgia Division of Family and Children Services) and the juvenile court have to go with what their view of the best interest of the child is.”  

In this case, that would be providing the children with their routine childhood immunizations, Petrany said.  

DHS Commissioner Candice Broce sent a memo to DFCS employees on June 1 directing them not to seek immunizations for any child in temporary custody if the child’s parents hold a sincere religious objection.

Likewise, DFCS cannot direct foster parents and others caring for children in custody to have their own children immunized if they hold sincere religious beliefs opposing it, the memo said.   

Petrany, the DHS lawyer, said the agency’s recent change in policy was not due to the dispute in this case. 

Thursday marked David Nahmias’s last day hearing arguments as chief justice. Nahmias will resign on July 17, and Michael Boggs will take over as chief justice.    

The court next meets to hear oral arguments on Aug. 23.  

This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.

Georgia mental health commission planning next round of reforms

Georgia’s Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission met in Atlanta on Thursday

ATLANTA – Georgia is starting “the decade of mental health reforms” Kevin Tanner, chairman of the state’s Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission, said this week. 

The high-level commission, formed in 2019, developed long-range recommendations to address the state’s abysmal mental health outcomes. The General Assembly adopted some of those recommendations during the 2022 legislative session.  

The commission met Thursday to check in on the progress of the reforms and plan for the next legislative session.  

“This is one of the best budget and policy years the agency has seen in many, many years,” said Caylee Noggle, commissioner of the state Department of Community Health (DCH), which administers Georgia Medicaid and the State Health Benefit Plan covering teachers and state employees.

Commission members identified mental health pay rates and workforce shortages, care coordination, and helping people with mental illness avoid the criminal justice system as key priorities for the next round of reforms.  

Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver, D-Decatur, said she is concerned that Georgia’s relatively low payment rates for inpatient psychiatric treatment contribute to a shortage of treatment options for Georgians.  

Some Georgia mental health placement beds are filled by people from other states, who are sent here because of Georgia’s low rates, Oliver said. 

DCH recently raised the payment rates for some inpatient psychiatric treatment facilities.  

“There’s still a big gap there,” Noggle acknowledged.   

The new mental health services bill requires DCH to study and report on Georgia’s reimbursement rates by the end of this year.  

Oliver said she would be closely watching the results of that rate study. She urged Noggle to use her role to ensure the rates are increased.  

“It starts with you,” Oliver told Noggle. “It’s a pretty high priority in my mind.”  

The lack of treatment options is reflected in the number of children with mental health complaints who repeatedly visit emergency rooms at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) hospitals, said Dr. Daniel Salinas, chief of community clinical integration for the hospital system.  

Salinas said many of the children who repeatedly come to CHOA emergency rooms with serious mental health complaints had been in state custody and/or had histories of physical or sexual abuse.

Salinas said there’s a lack of “robust coordination” of mental health treatment plans for children.

“As an advocacy organization, we see not doing [care coordination] for children’s mental health as discrimination,” said Kim Jones, executive director for the Georgia chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Salinas said CHOA has set aside $170 million to develop mental health services over the next five years. The hospital system recently started an outpatient referral center and is piloting a program in which mental health services are integrated into a primary care center. 

Oliver said she is particularly concerned about a subset of children in state custody who do not have placements with families or group homes and are instead living in hotels.  

She said there could be between 30 and 60 such children in Georgia living in hotels each day.  

On the criminal justice front, Tanner said the issue of transportation to mental health services for people who are picked up by law enforcement came up frequently during last year’s discussions.  

A subcommittee chaired by Georgia Supreme Court Presiding Justice Michael Boggs will study how many such rides are needed and what they cost, Tanner said.

This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.

 

Georgia Supreme Court upholds judicial appointment

Judge Jesse Stone

ATLANTA –  The Georgia Supreme Court Tuesday upheld a lower court decision denying a challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp’s appointment of former state Sen. Jesse Stone to a judgeship in Augusta.

Kemp appointed Stone to a Superior Court judgeship in the Augusta Judicial Circuit last February, one year after the resignation of former Judge Michael Annis.

Lawyer Maureen Floyd filed a petition last March in Burke County challenging the validity of the appointment, and Stone submitted a motion to dismiss it.

The trial court sided with Stone, rejecting Floyd’s argument that the appointment was illegal because it was not made “promptly” as required by the Georgia Constitution. The court also noted that Floyd failed to cite any authority supporting her conclusion that removal from office was a proper remedy.

Tuesday’s Supreme Court opinion noted that Floyd’s contention of a promptness requirement relied on a provision in the constitution that pertains to the executive branch of state government rather than the judicial branch.

The opinion also noted that removing Stone would simply have created another vacancy, further prolonging the length of time  the office was vacant.

“A remedy that aggravates the injury flowing from a constitutional violation is not a remedy that is tailored to the injury,” Presiding Justice Michael Boggs wrote for the court.

The decision also noted that Floyd did not contend that Stone was in any way personally ineligible to hold the office.

Stone, who served as mayor of Waynesboro during the 2000s, was elected to the Georgia Senate in 2010. He didn’t seek reelection last year.

This story is available through a news partnership with Capitol Beat News Service, a project of the Georgia Press Educational Foundation.

Would-be independent candidate for Georgia House loses court appeal

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger

ATLANTA – The Georgia Supreme Court Monday rejected a bid to place the name of an independent candidate for the state House of Representatives on last November’s general election ballot.

Under state law, Andrew Bell was required to obtain the signatures of at least 1,255 registered voters to land a spot on the ballot against incumbent Rep. Karla Drenner, D-Avondale Estates, in House District 85.

Bell submitted 2,200 signatures to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office last August, one day before the legal deadline.

However, Raffensperger ruled that only 827 of the signatures were legally valid. The rest were from outside the district, duplicates, printed names rather than signatures, came from people not registered to vote or were illegible, Raffensperger determined.

Bell sought an injunction from Fulton County Superior Court to prohibit any ballots from being printed without his name. Following a hearing in mid-September, the judge ruled against Bell, declaring that he failed to demonstrate the rejected signatures were rejected in error.

Bell filed an emergency appeal with the Georgia Supreme Court, which the court granted in mid-October. However, by that time, the ballot had already been printed and early voting had begun.

In Monday’s unanimous decision, the court declared Bell’s appeal moot because the election has been held and Drenner – who was unopposed – has been certified as the winner.

“An appeal is moot when this court can no longer provide the specific relief requested,” Justice Michael P. Boggs wrote for the court. “Bell seeks to stop the printing of ballots that have already been printed, cast and counted, and he seeks to compel the secretary to place his name on a ballot that no longer exists for an election that has already occurred.”

Chief Justice Melton asks Georgia lawmakers for help with trial backlog

Georgia Chief Justice Harold Melton

ATLANTA – Georgia Chief Justice Harold Melton asked members of the General Assembly Tuesday to pass legislation aimed at shrinking a serious backlog of jury trials resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

The bill, which the Georgia Senate passed overwhelmingly early this month and is now before the state House of Representatives, would allow trial courts to continue suspending statutory speedy trial deadlines during judicial emergencies such as the pandemic.

Last week, Melton ordered jury trials to resume in Georgia a year after he suspended them because of COVID-19. But so many cases have piled up that it will take two or three years to work through the backlog, he said during his annual State of the Judiciary message to a joint session of the House and Senate.

“Not only will we have significantly more cases, but the process of moving them through the system at least initially will go more slowly due to all the safety protocols,” he said. “As we resume jury trials, if we’re only able to move at a third of the pace, we will be relieving some of the pressure, but the backlog will continue to grow.”

Melton praised judges and court staffs across the state for adjusting quickly to the new conditions the pandemic forced upon them, as in-person proceedings went virtual.

“This past year, I have witnessed first-hand that your judges and courts are remarkably resilient, flexible, creative, and committed in their mission to uphold the law and mete out justice fairly and equitably,” he said. “Justice and the rule of law cannot wait on a pandemic.”

But while the courts have remained open, jury trials had to be put on hold to protect public safety, Melton said.

“The decision to open jury trials is different from opening private businesses,” he said. “Unlike when individuals choose whether to visit a store, or a gym, or a restaurant, when a citizen receives a jury summons, that’s not an invitation, it’s an order. We compel people to come to court.

“It has therefore been critical that when we resumed jury trials, we did it right – with the necessary safeguards in place.”

Melton thanked members of a task force he appointed last May that developed those safeguards to protect court employees and the public.

The chief justice also noted that Tuesday’s appearance before the General Assembly was his last. He announced last month he would be stepping down in July after 16 years on the Georgia Supreme Court.

The justices unanimously elected Presiding Justice David Nahmias last week to succeed Melton as chief justice and selected Justice Michael Boggs to assume the role of presiding justice.

“There are no two more able,” Melton said. “Our state is extremely fortunate to have them in those roles.”