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Georgia high court upholds dismissal of lawsuit over protests at state Capitol

By The Associated Press
Published  October 31, 2024 9:43pm EDT
Georgia Politics
Associated Press
article

Congresswoman Rep. Nikema Williams (D-GA) speaks onstage at a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris at the Georgia State Convocation Center on July 30, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Julia Beverl

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The Brief

    • The Georgia Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by activists, including a former and a current state lawmaker, who were arrested during protests at the state Capitol.
    • The plaintiffs had protested for uncounted ballots in the 2018 governor's race and against a new election law in 2021, resulting in their arrest.
    • They argued that the law used for their arrest violated free speech and was unconstitutionally vague, but the court found their allegations insufficient to declare the law unconstitutional.
    • Justice Ellington stated the law did not prohibit a substantial amount of protected speech and was mainly aimed at preventing disruption of legislative business.
    • Presiding Justice Peterson concurred but warned that the statute had serious flaws and recommended that it should be revised to avoid constitutional issues.

ATLANTA - Georgia’s highest court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a former state lawmaker, a current state lawmaker and several others who were arrested while protesting at the state Capitol.

U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, who was a state senator at the time, was among 15 people arrested in November 2018 while calling for uncounted ballots to be tallied. Unofficial election results at the time showed Republican Brian Kemp with a slim lead over Democrat Stacey Abrams in the race for governor, but Abrams maintained that enough uncounted absentee, mail-in and provisional ballots remained to force a runoff. Kemp was ultimately declared the winner and became governor.

Separately, state Rep. Park Cannon was arrested March 25, 2021, after knocking on the door of the governor’s office as he made livestreamed comments in support of a sweeping new election law he’d just signed.

Williams and Cannon, both Democrats, and several others sued the Georgia Department of Public Safety officers who were involved in the arrests or who they said were responsible for enforcement decisions. They argued that the law used to arrest them violated free-speech protections in the Georgia Constitution and is unconstitutionally vague. They also argued that the law was unconstitutionally used on them because they had no intention to disrupt a session of the General Assembly and did not do so.

A Fulton County superior court judge dismissed those claims. The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously upheld that dismissal.

Justice John Ellington wrote in the opinion that the allegations in the lawsuit were not sufficient to support a declaration that the law "is facially unconstitutionally overbroad or vague under Georgia law."

"Construed according to their plain and unambiguous terms, these provisions do not prohibit a substantial amount of protected speech relative to their plainly legitimate sweep of prohibiting conduct likely to prevent or disrupt legislative business," Ellington wrote.

Presiding Justice Nels Peterson wrote a concurring opinion that identified constitutional problems with the law, saying "the State should not confuse this limited victory with a clean bill of health for the statute."

"The statute is seriously flawed. Those charged with its enforcement should take care to avoid those flaws, and the General Assembly should seriously consider revising it," he wrote.