Legislative Watch

The Georgia First Amendment Foundation seeks to engage lawmakers in protecting and expanding Georgians’ right to know. We monitor legislative proposals in the General Assembly, looking for bills that could have an impact on open government and free speech in our state. Below are key bills we’re watching as the 2024 session winds down.

Thanks to Madi Blair, Jessica Cooper and Andrew Miller, law students at the University of Georgia School of Law’s First Amendment Clinic, for providing research and analysis for this year’s Legislative Watch. Our legislative monitoring is enabled by Bill Track 50.

Please come back to this page for regular updates, keep up with GFAF in the News and follow us on social media (links above).

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SOCIAL MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY

House Bill 910 would require websites containing a “substantial portion” of “material harmful to minors” to verify the ages of people attempting to access this material. The bill also makes the websites liable for any damages arising from a minor accessing these materials by broadly permitting civil lawsuits against the websites for failure to verify users’ ages. The bill carves out an exception for internet service providers, news outlets, and public interest broadcasts.

>>> Read more: Lawmakers push for law to require proof of adulthood to view adult websites

Senate Bill 351 requires schools and social media companies to regulate minors’ use of social media. The bill would add social media usage to character education in Georgia schools, and it would require schools to prohibit social media use on school equipment unless the use is for educational purposes. The bill also confines the definition of cyberbullying for purposes of school discipline to bullying that takes place on school equipment or on school grounds. For cyberbullying that takes place off school grounds, the bill limits the definition to serious or severe bullying that targets one or more particular students or school employees. The bill also would force social media providers to take “commercially reasonable” efforts to verify the age of minors and require parental supervision, and it would limit social media companies’ ability to collect data and provide specific advertisements to minors.

HB 986 would make it a felony to use “deepfakes,” meaning artificially generated video or sound recordings, with intent to reduce a candidate’s chances of being elected or “otherwise influencing the result of an election or referendum.” The crime would be punishable by one to five years and a maximum fine of $50,000. The bill penalizes the creation and republication of deepfakes, but it allows candidates to create their own deepfakes of themselves. The bill’s overly broad language would potentially penalize a wide array of legitimate speech, including political criticism and satire.

>>> Read more: Does Georgia’s bill banning “deepfakes” go too far?

👁️‍🗨️ SB 473 aims to protect people’s personal data by imposing rules on data collectors and granting people several rights, including the right to correct inaccuracies and request deletion of personal information.

LIBRARIES & EDUCATION

SB 390 would block the Georgia Board of Regents and any local government from spending money or doing any business with the American Library Association or any of its affiliates. The bill also would remove the credentialing process for librarians from the Secretary of State’s office and move it to a separate nonprofit.

FREE SPEECH & EXPRESSION

SB 63 — a legislative response to controversy surrounding the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center — would restrict the ability of judges to release people arrested for criminal trespass, obstruction of a law enforcement officer, racketeering and conspiracy, domestic terrorism, riot, inciting a riot, unlawful assembly, or possessing tools for commission of a crime, even if those arrested post bail. The bill also would restrict charitable bail funds from posting more than three cash bonds per year. The bill stalled in 2023 but has moved steadily through the current session.

OPEN GOVERNMENT & PUBLIC ACCESS

HB 1044 increases the threshold for competitive bidding for local government construction contracts from $100,000 to $250,000. A similar bill, HB 193, passed last year but was vetoed by the governor because it failed to account for state government purchasing.

>>> Read more: Increasing no-bid government contracts would reduce transparency

HB 909 amends the First Offender Act to require automatic sealing of sentences, arrest information, and related criminal history for first offenders. Currently, first offender records only can be sealed following a petition process, i.e., sealing is not automatic. The records would remain available to law enforcement and the defendant.

HB 873 establishes a juvenile treatment court whose records would not be subject to public access or subpoena.

HB 881 amends Georgia Code Section 15-18-32 in ways that could reduce public access to information about the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Qualifications Commission.

✅ HB 196 would expand application of the state Open Meetings Act and Open Records Act to the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission, which currently is shielded from Georgia’s transparency laws.

>>> Read more: Growing mistrust instead of cannabis in Georgia

✅ SB 324 would create an address confidentiality program, administered by the Georgia Secretary of State, for victims of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or human trafficking, and for other people for whom the disclosure of their address would increase the risk that they could be physically harmed by another person. The program would allow people to use a designated address with the Secretary of State as their address to keep their actual address confidential. It would allow participants to use a designated form to notify government entities (including utilities and clerks of superior courts) of their participation in the confidentiality program; receipt of the form would trigger government entities’ responsibility to keep the participant’s address confidential.

👁️‍🗨️ SB 212 would require all counties that use probate court judges as election superintendents to create a board of elections by the end of 2024. The bill would require those boards of elections to hold monthly meetings subject to the Open Meetings Act, and it would require the boards to keep and make available to the public written records of policy decisions.

👁️‍🗨️ HB 883 would allow county health boards to meet by teleconference routinely, rather than only when made necessary by public emergencies or other extenuating circumstances.

👁️‍🗨️ HB 269 allows teleconference meetings of local workforce development boards.

Watch a replay of our 2024 Gold Dome preview, where lawmakers Sen. Jason Esteves, Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver and Rep. Bill Werkheiser joined with Georgia Municipal Association General Counsel Rusi Patel in a conversation covering public access to booking photographs, referendum politics, social media regulation, artificial intelligence, Sunshine Laws enforcement and more.