A class-action lawsuit filed Friday is challenging a law passed in 2024 requiring people accused of minor criminal offenses such as trespassing and failure to appear in court to pay bail for their release from jail.
As the bill moved through the legislative process last year, its sponsor, Republican state Sen. Randy Robertson, said his intention was to ensure people who have been arrested and released on bond return for their trial.
But the lawsuit, filed in Fulton County Superior Court by the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia and the Southern Center for Human Rights, contends the state law violates defendants’ rights to due process and is unconstitutional. People accused of crimes but not yet convicted could be jailed because they cannot afford bond, infringing on their right to physical liberty, the lawsuit states.
And because the law requires cash for release, Senate Bill 63 is “more debilitating for people without stable housing” and “exacerbates racial disparities in Georgia’s criminal legal system,” according to the lawsuit.
“Georgia is a particularly cruel state that locks up a higher percentage of its population than any independent democratic country in the world. This lawsuit would bring an end to holding the most vulnerable people at Fulton County jail and in all jails across the state simply because they can’t afford to pay bail,” Andrea Young, executive director of ACLU of Georgia, said in a statement.
The law bucks a trend for Republicans who had moved away from requiring people arrested on nonviolent misdemeanor charges to pay money to bond out of jail. Former Gov. Nathan Deal worked to steer people who commit nonviolent offenses from prison cells to treatment centers.
Robertson, a former Muscogee County sheriff’s deputy, said he wants to ensure victims feel they are getting justice.
“I feel confident that law was vetted very well,” he said.
Judges have the discretion to set bonds as low as $1, he said.
“This is just a continuation of an agenda that puts crime victims in the back of everybody’s mind. It’s the same agenda that we’ve seen from the liberal corners of those who claim they want justice, but in fact, all they want is more freedom for criminals,” Robertson said.
The ACLU and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University Law Center filed a separate lawsuit last year on the same legislation.
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