GA Legislative Watch 2025 | Week Three

February 1, 2025
Friendly Amendment, GLW, In the News

GA Legislative Watch

By Molly Mcloughlin ● Jan 24, 2025
Smart Brevity™ count: 6 mins…1,546 words

🙏 First, we give our sincere condolences to the families and friends of the two Georgians who lost their lives in the tragic D.C. aircraft accident.

Lawmakers doubled up on budget hearings and committee meetings for legislative days 6-9 to make up for the weather delays.

🌪 Situational awareness: Our news feeds couldn’t refresh fast enough this week, from touchy presidential cabinet hearings and a deluge of administrative orders to a flurry of hot button bills here (which have come up much earlier in the session than usual.)

Yes, but: We still expect the typical trojan horse or two later in the session as well.

1 big thing: Tort reform

🎤 In front of one of the largest press conference crowds we’ve seen at the Capitol, Gov. Kemp laid out his highly anticipated plan to overhaul the state’s civil litigation system, aka tort reform.

Supporters dub the issue as “tort reform,” which typically means making something better, but not everyone agrees these changes are for the better.
Literally, tort is a legal term meaning a harmful act leading to a civil lawsuit, with the exception of contract breaches.

Driving Kemp’s overhaul is business and healthcare communities’ claims that high litigation costs and jury awards are hurting their financial stability, making it difficult to secure insurance coverage, and ultimately driving up insurance rates for everyone.

The plan, outlined in SB 68 and SB 69, would:

Limit liability for property owners if someone is injured on site.
Block foreign adversaries from funding Georgia lawsuits and limit other groups looking to fund cases advantageously.
Ban lawyers from suggesting lucrative jury awards in their closing statements.
Split cases into two stages, one determining fault and the other determining damages.
Ban lawyers from recovering legal fees twice for one case.
Allow juries to consider evidence of whether or not someone was wearing their seatbelt.

What they’re saying: By curbing litigation costs and limiting liability, insurance premiums could go down, which some medical professionals claim would attract physicians to a state they see as wrought with legal loopholes. 💸 The question of who can sue for damages and how much they recover goes back decades.

In 2005, then Gov. Sonny Perdue capped malpractice awards and incentivized patients to settle outside of court. The law was chipped away by the courts over the years until the state Supreme Court deemed it unconstitutional in 2010.
Gov. Kemp teased an overhaul last year, but walked it back quickly and tasked Insurance Commissioner John King with studying the issue.

Why now? It’s the term-limited Gov.’s last chance to solidify his pro-business legacy, considering next year’s session will be enveloped in 2026 election politics.

Small and large business owners, hospital groups and insurance companies support the plan.

The other side: Consumer and patient advocacy groups, progressive organizations, and trial lawyers (including some Rs in the legislature) argue that there’s no evidence linking high insurance rates to litigation practices, and changes to the legal system won’t necessarily yield lower premiums.

They also claim the changes are a corporate handout that could keep wronged citizens from being fairly compensated.
Democrats maintain that the state’s failure to fully expand Medicaid is to blame for high insurance costs.

💰 The pockets behind both sides of the issue are deep, with outside groups throwing millions into ads – including Gov. Kemp’s leadership PAC.

Bottom line: Passing reform won’t be easy, despite the Gov.’s political and financial capital.

With the issue not falling neatly along party lines, Kemp may need Democrats’ support, opening the door for them to potentially negotiate another issue, like trans rights or Medicaid, although their leadership isn’t interested in trading votes at this juncture.

Yes, but: Gov. Kemp promised lawmakers that he’d call them back for a special session if they don’t bring it home by Sine Die.

2. Notable legislation

Medicaid expansion is back, and notably co-sponsored by 4 Republicans, via SB 50. It follows Arkansas’ conservative model using federal funds to purchase private insurance plans for Georgians making about $41K for a family of four.

Both the Gov. and the Speaker have made it clear they are not on board, wanting to see the current Pathways plan through, while the Lt. Gov. has yet to show his cards.
By the numbers: According to DCH, 6,514 out of 246,365 people who are eligible for Pathways are enrolled in it.
If Georgia were to fully expand Medicaid, nearly 300,000 people could be covered.

💡 To ensure data center electric bills aren’t passed on to consumers, SB 34 proposes the centers pay for their own high energy demands, potentially through special rate structures.

This is in line with a new PSC rule proposed by Georgia Power and approved last week.

🚚 Pile it on. HB 164 would indefinitely extend the measure that allows increased truck weights on local and state roads. The bill that passed two years ago has the increase expiring July 1.

We expect another contentious fight between local governments and the hauling industry on this obscure yet highly impactful issue.

The trans sports bill, SB 1, passed out of committee, and would ban biological males from participating in women’s sports from middle school to college, including in private institutions.

State transgender employees’ transition treatments may not be covered by the state’s health insurance plan with SB 39, co-sponsored by two long-time Senate Democrats and backed by almost every Senate Republican.

🍎 The homestead tax exemption approved by voters last year seems to be in flux with most of the large school districts already announcing their intent to opt out, citing the devastating loss of tax revenue.

HB 92, which passed out of committee this week, would extend the deadline for local governments to make the decision from March 1 to May 1, 2025.
Yes, but. Residents have expressed their opposition to opting out of a measure that would lower their property taxes, so we could see a bill to force local governments to comply.
Go deeper.

Georgia does DOGE. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones announced SB 28 with fanfare.

Modeling President Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, the “Red Tape Rollback Act of 2025” requires state agencies to review their rules and regulations every four years and report on them through an economic impact lens.
Intended to reduce red tape for small businesses, it requires a special analysis of any new bills that may impact small businesses, the state’s “largest job creators.”

Keep politics out of the courts, says Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael P. Boggs. He appealed to state officials during his State of the Judiciary address to end partisan elections for state judges.

“Simply put, an independent judiciary, with respect for the rule of law, keeps us from becoming a society in which the person with the biggest stick is in charge,” Boggs said.

He also ensured the courts are preparing for the opportunities and threats AI brings to the legal system, noting their court reporter shortage is ripe for innovation.

3. Other political news

Stop and go? The White House issued an order to pause federal grants and loans then rescinded it, but not before government officials and organizations everywhere scrambled to make heads or tails of it. Though a federal judge halted the order, funding that could be impacted is

“including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

Big questions loom as national dems gather to elect new leaders Saturday, including party chair. Rep. Nikema Williams and state Sen. Sheikh Rahman (D-Lawrenceville) are among eight candidates for vice chair of civic engagement and voter participation.

Go deeper.

🌴 Slim margins. House Republicans also met to plan how they will push forward President Trump’s agenda with a margin of 217 Rs to 215 Ds while they await two vacancies to be filled.

Compounding that ratio is a hint that reaching agreement among their own party might be tough since many of the reddest of the red skipped or lambasted the retreat in Miami.

“After two days at our House Republican winter retreat, we still do not have a plan on budget reconciliation and our Speaker and his team have not offered one,” said Georgia’s own Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on X.

Gainesville Mayor Sam Couvillon announced he will run against Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde for the District 9 seat.

👏 Honoring Dean Calvin Smyre. Georgia officials of both parties past and present including former Govs. Roy Barnes and Sonny Perdue, U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, and former DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond gathered to honor the Democrat who worked across party lines and successfully smoothed over fractures in his own party for 48 years before retiring in 2022.

4. What’s next?

Revving up the engine. Next week we expect committee hearings to kick into high gear, with only 31 legislative days left and 18 until Crossover Day in a little over a month.