Tuesday was pride day at the state Capitol. It was also the day the Senate passed a controversial so-called religious freedom bill. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
Tuesday was the last legislative day before the session’s first major deadline as lawmakers make their last-ditch attempts to get their bill out of at least one chamber.
The House passed the GOP leadership’s school safety bill, receiving a boost from a rare speech from the speaker during the debate, and Tuesday also saw several other education-related bills emerge from both chambers. You can read all about those bills over here.
Here’s a look at some of the other notable bills that passed on Crossover Day eve.
RFRA’s back again
The Georgia Senate has passed a state version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA.
Conservative supporters say passing the bill into law will provide Georgians with the same protections from local governments restricting their right to worship as the federal Constitution provides from government intrusion. Democrats said the bill could create a license to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
“What we see is we look nationally, as we look around our state, there is no legal protection,” said the bill’s sponsor, Acworth Republican Sen. Ed Setzler. “People of faith have the lowest level of legal protection that exists in our legal system. What we’re simply seeking to do is giving them the kind of protection that you have that’s consistent with the constitutional right. That’s all we’re doing.”
Under the bill, before a government can “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” it would have to demonstrate that it would be “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and using “the least restrictive means of furthering such compelling governmental interest.”
Setzler gave examples from other states, including a veiled Muslim woman who was allowed to be photographed unveiled for her driver’s license in a private room by a woman photographer so as not to violate her religious precepts.
Democrats said they were more concerned with the potential for people being denied services like medication or housing because they practice a minority religion or are LGBTQ.
Atlanta Sen. RaShaun Kemp said those concerns are personal for him.
“When I go to church with my husband and my two kids, I get to worship and praise God with no limitations and you can actually do the same,” he said. “Nothing prevents you from worshiping God in your way. Nothing prevents any Georgian from worshiping any religion. The only thing this bill does is allows people to use their religion as a free pass to discriminate. Under this bill, someone could deny me, my husband, my son, and my beautiful daughter’s service out of business and use their religion as a reason to do that. So, this isn’t about politics for me, it’s about the ability for my family to live freely in this state.”
As the Senate debated the bill, a large group of advocates for LGBTQ rights gathered inside the state Capitol to condemn a string of bills banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports and cutting off access to gender-affirming care for state workers and prison inmates.
Tax credit for safe firearm storage, training moves to the Senate
House lawmakers have revived a proposal to reward gun owners who buy safe storage devices or who take a safety course.
A similar bill stalled last year, as did a Senate measure that offered a tax break for firearm safety devices. The House bill creates a $300 tax credit for devices like safes or trigger locks, or it could be used to pay for a safe handling class.
But this time, lawmakers are considering the incentives in the wake of a school shooting.
Two students and two teachers died in September when a 15-year-old student at Apalachee High School carried out a shooting that also injured nine students.
A high-profile school safety measure backed by House Speaker Jon Burns also passed Tuesday, but HB 75 is the only gun safety bill that has gained traction this session before Thursday’s deadline for a bill to pass at least one chamber.
Rep. Michelle Au, a Johns Creek Democrat, pressed her colleagues to couple the incentives with regulations like those envisioned in a bill she filed early in the session. Her bill would make it a crime to leave a firearm where a child can access it.
Passing incentives without the regulations, Au said, would be like offering family vouchers for buying a car seat but not having a law requiring they be used for babies and children.
And she floated an alternative ending where the police officers who talked to the accused Apalachee gunman before the fatal shooting could have talked to the father about Georgia’s laws requiring safe storage.
“Nothing should haunt us more in this chamber than a missed opportunity, and nothing should shame us more than failing to learn from our mistakes. We don’t have to miss this opportunity again,” Au said Tuesday.
But the bill’s gentle approach toward gun owners was one of the selling points. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mark Newton, repeatedly stressed that his bill’s potentially life-saving provisions are voluntary. There’s no threat of criminal changes, and the bill also bars the creation of any list of those who have benefited from the tax credit.
“We have put some guardrails around it that I think are respectful of your bill of rights, your Second Amendment rights, but also allows responsible gun owners the option that they need, the choices that they need,” Newton said.
The bill passed the House with a 165-8 vote.
Bill seeking to end death penalty for people with intellectual disabilities clears House
House lawmakers unanimously passed a measure Tuesday that is meant to ensure that people who are intellectually disabled are not executed in the future.
Today, Georgia is the only state with the death penalty that requires a defendant to prove beyond a reasonable doubt – the highest possible legal standard – that they are intellectually disabled.
And defendants must also prove that at the same time juries are determining the guilt or innocence of the defendant, which proponents of the bill argued injects bias into what should be a straightforward determination of whether the person is intellectually disabled.
The bill, sponsored by Glennville Republican state Rep. Bill Werkheiser, would lower the standard of proof to the “preponderance of the evidence” and create a separate pre-trial hearing focused on whether the defendant is intellectually disabled.
“This bill does not eliminate accountability,” said Rep. Tyler Paul Smith, a Bremen Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee. “It actually refines our justice system to ensure that punishment is proportional and appropriate.”
The bill found broad support in the House.
“An intellectually disabled individual facing the death penalty is the ultimate test of our collective moral character,” said Rep. Esther Panitch, a Sandy Springs Democrat who is a defense attorney. “And I submit that we must choose compassion over retribution and understanding over punishment.”
The bill overcame opposition from district attorneys who objected to the proposed pre-trial hearing and who argued that people with intellectual disabilities are not being executed in Georgia – a claim Werkheiser said is untrue, pointing to the execution of Warren Hill in 2015.
The bill moves to the Senate for consideration.
Protections for fertilizer and pesticide manufacturers?
A Senate bill advanced Tuesday that will protect fertilizer and pesticide manufacturers from liability for not having product labels warning consumers of potential health risks above what’s federally mandated.
Senate Bill 144 passed by a 42-12 vote, which saw Democrats split on legislation that supporters say will limit pesticide manufacturers from costly lawsuits that supporters of the bill say lead to higher food prices harming Georgia farmers and families.
There was a tense debate over whether the bill would protect Georgia farmers or merely coddle Bayer and Monsanto, which have been forced to pay billions of dollars in damages because of allegations that their weed killer Roundup causes cancer. Supporters of the bill claim that it clarifies what pesticide companies are required by the Environmental Protection Agency to include on their labels.
Sen. Nabilah Islam Parkes, a Duluth Democrat, criticized the bill for protecting corporate interests over public health.
“Monsanto, now owned by Bayer, has already paid out billions in lawsuits because their Roundup herbicide has been linked to cancer, and now they want to change the law so they never have to pay again,” Islam Parkes said. “They want to make it impossible for farmers, landscapers and everyday Georgians to seek justice when they suffer from pesticide exposure.”
The bill’s sponsor Sen. Sam Watson, a Moultrie Republican and farmer, said the measure is about not punishing companies for failing to display a warning label if it is not a federal requirement.
Manufacturers are not protected from lawsuits if they “knowingly withheld, concealed, misrepresented or destroyed material information about the health risks of the pesticide,” the bill states.
“When I started my comments, I said that this bill was strictly about the label,” Watson said. “Because of the EPA, they were not allowed to put it on the (Roundup) label. Therefore, it led to 170,000 lawsuits that cost us $17 billion and now my future, my family’s future, and many other farmers across this nation’s future are in jeopardy.”
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