Georgia Constitutional Interpretation Module

Presumption of Constitutionality 

It is well-settled that all presumptions are in favor of the constitutionality of an act of the legislature and that before an Act of the legislature can be declared unconstitutional, the conflict between it and the fundamental law must be clear and palpable and this Court must be clearly satisfied of its unconstitutionality. Moreover, because statutes are presumed to be constitutional until the contrary appears, the burden is on the party alleging a statute to be unconstitutional to prove it. Dev. Auth. of DeKalb Co. v. State of Ga., 286 Ga. 36, 38 (1) (684 SE2d 856) (2009) (citation and punctuation omitted). 

The challenger has a "heavy burden of demonstrating that a 'clear and palpable' conflict exists between the 2017 amendment and the taxation uniformity provision." Heron Lake Apartments v. Lowndes County Board of Tax Assessors, s19a0975 (2019). 

Constitutional Avoidance Doctrine

If “the language of an act is susceptible of a 21 construction that is constitutional, and another that would be unconstitutional, that meaning or construction will be applied which will sustain the act.” HCA Health Svcs. v. Roach, 265 Ga. 501, 503 (458 SE2d 118) (1995) (citation and punctuation omitted). 

Original public meaning

"We interpret the Georgia Constitution according to its original public meaning." Elliot (***) The reason for this, the Court has explained, is that “the Constitution, like every other instrument made by men, is to be construed in the sense in which it was understood by the makers of it at the time when they made it. To deny this is to insist that a fraud shall be perpetrated upon those makers or upon some of them.” See Padelford, Fay & Co. v. Mayor and Alderman of City of Savannah, 14 Ga. 438, 454 (1854). To determine a provision's original public meaning, we must consider the language, history, and context of that provision. Id at ***. Unlike other forms of interpretation, the focal point of "original public meaning" is not the intent of the drafters "[s]ince the people are the ultimate 'makers' of the Georgia Constitution" in the sense that they elect the drafters of the document, and must ratify the proposed Constitution. (emphasis added) See Elliot, 2019 WL 654178 at *3 n.4 (citing Olevik, 302 Ga. at 237-239).

Presumption of Constitutional Continuity

The principle of constitutional continuity embraces two presumptions: first, that a re-adopted constitutional provision carries forward the original public meaning from the time which it initially adopted, as opposed to a possible public meaning at the time of re-adoption; and second, that a re-adopted constitutional provision which has received consistent construction carries with it the construction it received under prior versions of the Constitution.

Today, of course, "the Georgia Constitution that we interpret . . . is the Constitution of 1983; the original public meaning of that Constitution is the public meaning it had at the time of  its ratification in 1982." Elliot, 2019 WL 654178 at *2. 

"Many of the provisions of the Constitution of 1983 first originated in an earlier Georgia constitution . . .  [t]he meanings of those previous provisions is critical to understanding the meaning they carried at the time they were readopted." Id.  

“A constitutional provision must be presumed to have been framed and adopted in the light and understanding of prior and existing laws and with reference to them. Constitutions, like statutes, are properly to be expounded in the light of conditions existing at the time of their adoption.” Clarke v. Johnson, 199 Ga. 163, 166 (33 SE2d 425) (1945). The Court therefore presumes "that a constitutional provision retained from a previous constitution without material change has retained the original public meaning that provision had at the time it first entered a Georgia Constitution, absent some indication to the contrary." (emphasis added) See Elliot, 2019 WL 654178 at *3 (citing cases). Similarly, "[a] constitutional clause that is readopted into a new constitution and that has received a consistent and definitive construction is presumed to carry the same meaning as that consistent construction." Id. at *3-4; See also McKnight v. City of Decatur, 200 Ga. 611, 616  (1946).

A federal constitutional provision is only persuasive where it shares text or history with Georgia

The third principle of Georgia Constitutional interpretation is, succinctly, that the Federal Constitution and our State Constitution are two different documents. As such, "Georgia constitutional provisions may confer greater, fewer, or the same rights as similar provisions of the United States Constitution, and decisions of the United States Supreme Court interpreting those similar provisions are persuasive in our interpretation of the Georgia Constitution only to the extent that those decisions are rooted in shared history, language, and context." (emphasis added) Elliot,  2019 WL 654178 at *5 . While the court must "faithfully apply the decisions of the United States Supreme Court as to the meaning of that [federal] provision," the Court "owe[s] those federal decisions no obedience when interpreting our own Constitution." Id.

The Court emphasized in Elliot that state constitutional rights were “meant to be and remain genuine guarantees against misuse of the state’s governmental powers, truly independent of the rising and falling tides of federal case law both in method and in specifics.” Id. at 6 (citing State v. Kennedy, 666 P2d 1316, 1323 (Or. 1983)). Thus, “[s]tate constitutional provisions may . . .  confer greater protections than their federal counterparts, provided that such broader scope is rooted in the language, history, and context of the state provision. In the same way, a state constitution may also offer less rights than federal law, so long as it does not affirmatively violate federal law.” Id.