Supporters and opponents of a bill instituting penalties for Georgia librarians who distribute materials deemed harmful to minors listen to a House committee debate the bill. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
Time is running out on the Georgia Legislative session and likely also lawmakers’ chance to make laws for the rest of the year.
Several Georgia legislative committees spent Wednesday holding hearings on controversial issues like transgender sports participation, library materials deemed to be obscene for children and a religious freedom bill detractors call a license to discriminate.
None of the bills moved forward Wednesday, but all three remain in play as the clock ticks away to April 4, the final legislative day. The governor has threatened to bring legislators back to the Capitol if they don’t deliver an overhaul of Georgia’s civil litigation damage award system by Sine Die, but lawmakers appear poised to send him legislation that will satisfy his demand.
Jeff Graham, executive director of pro-LGBTQ advocacy group Georgia Equality, said the three culture wars bills as well as a ban on puberty-blocking drugs for transgender minors that was heard in a House committee Tuesday are likely to reemerge before the session ends April 4.
“So we do have at least four anti-LGBTQ bills that are still in the process of working their way through the Legislature,” he said. “None of them have come out of committee at this point in time, but a committee action could still be taken at the last minute to move any of these bills forward. We’re still extremely concerned about how this session will end for LGBTQ Georgians.”
RFRA returns
A House committee could take a vote in the coming days on a bill supporters say will provide Georgians with protections from local governments restricting their right to worship as the federal Constitution provides from government intrusion.
The fate of Acworth Republican Sen. Ed Setzler so-called Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act remains under the control of a House Judiciary Committee that held a four hour hearing Wednesday on the controversial Senate Bill 36.
An initial vote on the bill failed, but it remains alive after a successful motion to reconsider, and it could return to the committee for another vote ahead of the end of the session.
Throughout the four-hour hearing, the committee members heard from several speakers representing religious groups, civil rights organizations, public officials and legal analysis who were nearly evenly split on the bill.
Setzler said his bill would fill a gap in the law where free exercise of religion is not protected from state and local governments. He also said the measure would not displace existing non-discrimination ordinances that several local governments in Georgia have enacted.
A number of the bill’s detractors contend that the bill could create a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people and other groups representing minority demographics .
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled shortly after Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, also known as RFRA, that the federal law only protected people from unfair federal government intrusion, and did not afford the same safeguards from state and local governments.
Since then, more than 30 states have adopted their own state religious freedom laws in order to protect their residents from governmental overreach, Setzler said.
Some Democratic lawmakers questioned the need for additional religious freedom protections when there are already federal laws protecting a person’s rights to exercise their free speech based on their religious beliefs.
Lance Kinzer, a public policy analyst for the 1st Amendment Partnership, has worked on passing similar RFRA legislation in several other states.
“We do have is a lot of instances where it is in existence in state law where its caused folks at the local level to have to sit down and work out solutions where both the government’s interest and the religious liberty interest of a religious group or religious individual who would be impacted are able to be resolved effectively,” Kinzer said.
Sandy Springs Democratic Rep. Esther Panitch said that being the only Jewish member of the General Assembly she feels a responsibility to speak out against the current version of the bill.
“I know what it means to need protections for religious practices, but as written, this bill will become a tool to those who want to discriminate against not just my faith, but other minority faiths and other people like the LGBTQ community,” Pantich testified Wednesday. “ And the easiest way to know that is because when confronted with a proposal to add an anti-discrimination provision in this to make this actually, in line with federal law, it has been rejected, time and time again.”
Mike Griffin, a public affairs representative for the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, said that RFRA restores the original intent of the First Amendment.
“While many opposing this legislation accused the RFRA of being discriminatory, it’s simply not true the legislation is not about protecting any discrimination,” Griffin said.
Rep. Scott Holcomb, an Atlanta Democrat, said he had questions about whether the state should also be passing its own civil rights statute if the religious freedom bill was to become law.
“I’m not fully convinced that this debate should be divorced in terms of the interplay between the protection of civil liberties and the protection of religious freedom,” Holcomb said.
“Adult human genitalia with the hair and everything”
A bill that would remove protections for librarians from the law against distributing explicit materials to minors did not receive a vote in a House committee Wednesday but Chairman Tyler Paul Smith, a Bremen Republican, said it will likely return to committee by Monday.
If Sylvania Republican Sen. Max Burns’ Senate Bill 74 becomes law, librarians would be subject to the same penalties as other Georgians if they were found handing out indecent materials to kids. Under state code, distributing harmful materials to minors is a high and aggravated misdemeanor, which can carry a fine of up to $5,000 or a sentence of up to a year.
Burns said it makes sense to hold librarians to the same standard as anyone else. The bill has an exception for library workers who unknowingly distribute material deemed harmful and who have made a good faith effort to keep such materials away from children.
He said the bill does not ban books but requires books deemed harmful to be placed in the adult section.
“It’s simply a fact that the librarian, if they had questionable material, they would correctly catalog them and shelve them in an adult section and not make them readily available to a minor and not distribute the material to a minor,” he said. “Don’t check it out, except where requested by a parent or legal guardian.”
Burns said he does not think librarians are knowingly handing out obscene materials and does not expect any of them to actually get into trouble.
Around 18 people came to the Capitol to testify on the bill, mostly in support. Activist Brenda Heidman characterized libraries as veritable smut factories.
“This exemption allows libraries to put porn, smut, obscene materials and pictures and sex stories directly where children are sure to find them,” she said. “And that’s not made up, that has happened. Parents have pulled books off the shelf and found pictures of adult human genitalia with the hair and everything for little children to look at because it’s in the little children’s section.”
Karin Parham of Columbia County said the bill could allow local busybodies with an ax to grind to challenge books based on their content.
“Harmful to minors, that can be construed in different ways,” she said. “So what we’re seeing in our local community is some people have a certain definition of obscenity and they want to apply that more broadly, and it doesn’t necessarily meet the legal definition of obscenity.”
Parham said parents have sought to remove books including “And Tango Makes Three,” a children’s book based on a true story about two male penguins who hatched an egg and raised a chick together.
“How is this even going to be defined? And are we going to jail librarians for a book that is in the library but is readily available at Target? Because that seems to be what is being advocated for in our local community,” she said.
House transgender ban
The House version of a bill banning transgender girls from school sports could be moving forward after a contentious subcommittee hearing.
Fayetteville Republican Rep. Josh Bonner’s HB 267 differs from the Senate’s version of a transgender sports ban, SB 1, because it also removes references to gender from across state code, replacing it with sex. Advocates say that could have unintended consequences like stopping the state from collecting vital statistics on transgender people or opening up legal discrimination against them in areas like adopting foster children.
About 17 people signed up to testify on this bill, almost all opposed. Opponents argued that the bill is based on the false premise that transgender women dominate in sports and would serve to isolate LGBTQ youth.
“One thing that I will say to the majority on this committee is that if anyone you love ever comes to you and shares their truth that they are gay or trans or they’re just not sure yet or somewhere in between, I hope to God that you are hypocrites, that you go back on what you are about to vote to do, that you love and accept them despite what you are about to do today,” said Marisa Pyle, a nonbinary Georgian.
Bonner said the bill is not intended to exclude transgender people.
“I like to focus in on not who’s perceived to be excluded, but who the bill is protecting, and that’s female athletes in Georgia,” he said. “I’m the father of two daughters, one that plays soccer, and I do not want, and I don’t think our constituents, I don’t think that the majority of Georgians want to be in a situation to tell their daughter that no matter how hard she trains, no matter how much she sacrifices or how much effort she puts into being the absolute best soccer player she can be, the moment she steps on that field, she will be at a decided disadvantage because she would have to play against a biological man.”
A Georgia High School Association rule already bars transgender girls from playing on girls’ teams.
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