A group of district attorneys filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against the state of Georgia and Governor Brian Kemp challenging Republican-led legislation that gives the state the ability to oust prosecutors it finds are not enforcing the law.
The four district attorneys are challenging Senate Bill 92, which Kemp signed into law in May creating a statewide Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission with the power to investigate complaints against district attorneys, discipline them and remove them from office if it decides they are not adequately carrying out state law. They claim that the law, which institutes a “top-down approach to law enforcement”, prevents voters from selecting their own district attorneys. In recent years, Georgia voters have increasingly chosen progressive, Black prosecutors.
The state is still in the process of forming the commission, which is expected to start accepting complaints later this year.
“We’re filing the lawsuit now, with the hope that the court can rule before that date and bar the commission from actually taking action on any of those complaints,” said Josh Rosenthal, the legal director at Public Rights Project who is representing the district attorneys.
Kemp signed the legislation after Georgia voters elected 14 minority district attorneys in 2020, up from just five previously. Many of the new district attorneys ran on progressive agendas with vows to not prosecute abortion crimes or to divert low-level offences out of court – policies that are not popular among conservatives, who favor tough-on-crime approaches.
“It’s undeniable that there has been a change in the makeup of the prosecutors in Georgia and that change is both demographic and philosophical,” Rosenthal said. “ I don’t think it’s an accident that there’s a sudden energy in the general assembly and from Governor Kemp this year, after those changes have happened.”
Three of the four district attorneys filing the lawsuit – Sherry Boston of DeKalb county, Jared Williams of the Augusta judicial circuit, and Flynn D Broady Jr of Cobb county – are Black. The fourth is Jonathan Adams of the Towaliga judicial circuit.
After Kemp signed the law, the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, who has gained notoriety for investigating allegations that former president Donald Trump subverted the 2020 election in Georgia, criticized the measure for the way it targeted Black prosecutors.
“I, quite frankly, think the legislation is racist,” she told a senate panel earlier this year, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “I don’t know what other thing to call it.”
Not only does the law allow the commission to remove a district attorney from office and prevent them from running again for 10 years, the lawsuit argues, but it also violates the district attorneys’ free speech, given that they can be punished for sharing with their constituents or potential constituents their philosophies on how they would carry out their role.
Rosenthal said the Georgia bill was part of a trend occurring in the state and across the country with state governments trying to take power away from local governments when they disagree with how they are addressing public safety.
Also in Georgia, Republican lawmakers who disapprove of newly elected progressive prosecutors have attempted to split judicial circuits. In one case, lawmakers removed white, conservative voters from the Augusta circuit where Williams – the first Black prosecutor ever elected there – had recently won election.
And in Florida, the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, removed the Hillsborough county state attorney, Andrew Warren, a Democrat, from office after Warren indicated he would not enforce statewide restrictions on abortion and gender therapy.
“This has become part of the authoritarian playbook,” Warren told NBC News. “Where rather than solving problems, you’re fanning the flames.”
