Constitution of Georgia

I teach a class at the univer- university on, uh, African American pedagogy, critical pedagogy.

And back in the 1940s and '50s, there was a movement called the, uh, Citizenship Schools, where Black people who wanted to register to vote- Were taught to read, to write, because in those days, there were all these rules that if you're Black, you can't register unless you can read the Georgia Constitution, for instance, and interpret it verbatim in front of the registrar, right? And so Franklin said, "Okay, bet.

We gonna, we gonna get somebody to teach us how to read and to, to think about these things." But one of the teachers of one of those citizenship schools, there's a story that she tells that for me becomes very important.

She, she comes to the first day of class.

And so what I plan to do as Secretary of State is use everything within my authority.

The Georgia Constitution says that I am the chief elections officer.

But guess what? No matter all of his blustering, no matter what they do, nothing in the Constitution requires anyone to make me certify the elections if I don't deem it proper and according to the law.

So once I'm Secretary of State, and I have to admit, Ron Raffensperger has held the line on this.

You would see state courts sometimes enforcing unwritten rights.

Most famously, the Georgia Supreme Court enforced the right to keep and bear arms even though there was no Right to keep brown provision in the Georgia Constitution and even though the Second Amendment didn't apply to the states They just started enforcing the right to keep and bear arms as if that right something

Do they do they reference the Second Amendment itself in that case? I

They briefly reference it, although they seem to acknowledge that they're not enforcing it.

Mm-hmm.

And I believe in that, to the Constitution of Georgia and America.

But you know, b- if people don't wanna value that, why don't, what are they gonna value?

Mm-hmm.

They say that, "You destroyed our property, and you have to compensate us for it," and their lawsuit is thrown out of court, uh, at the trial court level, and then, uh, that decision is affirmed on appeal.

And the court says, "This was an exercise of the police power," uh, and the police power is categorically exempt from the just compensation requirement in the Georgia Constitution.

Uh, now, the police power, uh, it sounds like it has to do with, like, the police, and in this case it does have to do with the police.

But it actually refers to a more general power that states have, uh, to regulate in the interest of promoting public health, safety, welfare, uh, things like that.

That's one of the things that distinguishes, uh, states from the federal government, which has limited and enumerated powers.

The point being that the police power is extremely broad.

Uh, and so if it were the case that all exercises of the police power are categorically exempt from the Georgia Constitution's Just Compensation Clause, that would blow a big hole in the Just Compensation Clause and mean that the government could destroy all kinds of property.

And instead of having the public pay for that, uh, those costs would all be borne by the individual property owners.