Legislative Watch

During the 2025 General Assembly session, the Georgia First Amendment Foundation monitored roughly two dozen legislative proposals with implications for open government, digital freedom, free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and other essential rights protected under the First Amendment and Georgia law.

The foundation connected directly with members of the General Assembly early in the session, and we were pleased that most of the troubling bills we engaged on did not pass out of both chambers. We are concerned about a few bills that did pass. See more on that below.

We are grateful to law students in the UGA School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic who analyzed bills for the foundation throughout the session. In addition, the students in their individual capacities penned op-eds on and testified before lawmakers on certain bills.

Below is a list of key legislation on the foundation’s radar.

TOP CONCERNS

Senate Bill 12 focuses on how private contractors carry out open records law requirements when they do business with Georgia government entities. GFAF connected with lawmakers early in the session to identify problems and suggest ways to reduce restrictions on the public’s access to records, and the bill improved. The bill ultimately passed on the last day of the session close to its original form.

But in the final days of the session, that outcome was far from certain. Last-minute maneuvering by lawmakers changed Senate Bill 12 for the worse. Legislators sought to expand the General Assembly’s exemption from the Georgia Open Records Act to prevent release of state agencies’ communications with lawmakers, as well as to prevent disclosure of information provided to lawmakers.

In addition, now-defunct amendments to Senate Bill 12 aimed to allow local police departments to shield from the public almost all information about officers’ stops, arrests and incident responses. This would have circumvented Georgians’ right to know about the actions of local police departments, which are funded by their taxpayer dollars, and would have significantly reduced citizens’ visibility into crime in their neighborhoods. Those end-of-session proposals were related to a recent Georgia Court of Appeals decision forcing the Sandy Springs Police Department to revisit its practice of publicly sharing one-sentence incident reports while keeping secret more detailed narratives of police activities.

Gov. Brian Kemp talked about the transparency implications of Senate Bill 12 in a news conference on April 4, the last day of the session. The bill — minus those troubling last-minute amendments — now awaits his signature.

Read news reports on Senate Bill 12:

• Georgia Recorder: Georgia GOP legislators push 11th hour surprise to further shield themselves from open records law
• Atlanta Journal-Constitution: What made the cut with Georgia lawmakers
• The Current: Read the 11th hour bill by Georgia GOP lawmakers that aims to block access to police reports
• AJC: Georgia GOP lawmakers make 11th hour bid to expand government secrecy
• Associated Press: Georgia Republicans push last-minute bill to limit public access to lawmaker and police records
• WANF-TV-Atlanta News First: Last-minute move to exempt police records from public view falls short
• Decaturish: Controversial changes to open records law removed from substitute bill for now
• Georgia Recorder: First Amendment defenders relieved after open records bill stripped of loopholes for state lawmakers

Senate Bill 27 would have added doxing to the list of crimes defined as stalking. GFAF board President Sarah Brewerton-Palmer testified (time stamp 57:37) before the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee on the problems with the bill, which would have upset the balance between free speech and privacy and still would not have stopped exposure of personally identifying information. Legislators did not pass the bill.

• Check out the myriad flaws in Senate Bill 27, and read a letter GFAF sent to lawmakers detailing the bill’s problems and unintended consequences.
• Read commentary about the First Amendment infringements inherent in Senate Bill 27, including making it a crime to share information already publicly available.

Senate Bill 74 and similar language tacked onto House Bill 483 would have exposed library workers at all levels to criminal liability for distribution of material deemed harmful to minors. GFAF Legislative Committee Co-Chair Nora Benavidez testified (time stamp 2:26:08) before the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee on Senate Bill 74. Neither bill survived the session.

• Read commentary warning that the effect of SB 74 would be to criminalize library workers at county, university, K-12 and community libraries for simply doing their jobs.

Senate Bill 29 would have expanded the scope of law enforcement DNA collection to include the collection of DNA samples from people arrested for felonies. If this bill had passed, DNA could have been collected from people booked or processed in a detention facility.

Senate Bill 9  was significantly changed late in the legislative session from a bill designed to curb AI-generated child pornography to a bill that criminalizes the publication or broadcast of loosely defined “deceptive information” within 90 days of an election. As it stands, Senate Bill 9 presents serious First Amendment risks; it could chill protected speech and lead the state into costly, and likely unsuccessful, legal battles paid for by Georgia taxpayers. In the 2026 session, lawmakers will have an opportunity to go back to the drawing board to address the real and timely issues of AI-generated misinformation and manipulation, while respecting the constitutional right to free speech. Note: A previous and erroneous Legislative Watch update said Senate Bill 9 had passed both chambers in its final version; we regret the error.

Senate Bill 36, also called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, will limit local and state government’s ability to enforce or pass laws that could conflict with religious beliefs. The bill could enable discrimination in the name of religious expression. The bill passed and was signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp.

>>> REGISTER NOW for Gold Dome Recap 2025, a FREE virtual event co-hosted by the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and the Atlanta Press Club. Political journalists and a First Amendment expert will unpack the 2025 legislative session. It’s happening April 22, noon-1 p.m. EDT. Registration required.