Tag: georgia

Eleventh Circuit Lets Georgia Social Media Age Checks Proceed

A federal appeals court has given a green light to a controversial part of a Georgia law that requires social media platforms to verify the age of every user, and in the case of those under 16, obtain parental consent.

The ruling came on Thursday, October 15, from a panel composed of Judges Newsom, Luck and Tjoflat, with Judge Kevin Newsom writing the opinion.

The case now goes back to the district court, but the decision did not address whether the law is ultimately constitutional – only that NetChoice went about its lawsuit the wrong way and did not provide enough evidence to prove the law is not constitutional.

Paul Taske, director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said, “While we are disappointed in the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling, the court notably did not hold that SB 351 is constitutional.”

On June 26, 2025, Judge Amy Totenberg of the Northern District of Georgia ruled that the law was too vague, that it was preempted by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), and that it likely violated the First Amendment, and blocked it.

The law’s social media part requires platforms to “make commercially reasonable efforts to verify the age of account holders” and obtain a parent’s consent for anyone under 16. For those under 16, platforms can only use age and location for ad targeting.

According to the court’s own summary, the law “requires platforms within its ambit to verify the ages of all their users.”

If a platform does not verify, it must “apply the special conditions applied to minors under this chapter to all account holders.” The ways a platform can confirm a parent include “Collecting information related to the minor’s parent’s or guardian’s government issued identification or financial or payment card information.”

The attorney general can seek up to $2,500 for each violation.

There is also another section of the law that requires sites that are more than 33.33 percent “harmful to minors” to check every visitor’s age, including by submitting government-issued ID. This part of the law has been in force since July 1, 2025, and was not challenged by NetChoice.

The Eleventh Circuit panel found that NetChoice had standing to sue but did not meet the test set by the Supreme Court in Moody v. NetChoice to prove the law was unconstitutional in a facial challenge – that is, across the full range of its application. The group had to show that the law was unconstitutional across the board, and it did not.

“NetChoice hasn’t provided even a full list of its own members to which SB 351 applies,” Judge Newsom wrote.

“We’ve learned the facial-challenge lesson the hard way,” the ruling states. “We needn’t address the merits of its First Amendment claim,” it continues.

The panel also reversed the lower court’s ruling that said the law was too vague and that it was preempted by Section 230.

Attorney General Chris Carr said, “This is a major win for Georgia families and a huge blow to those who would stand in the way of commonsense solutions to protect our kids.”

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Georgia Democratic Governor Nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms Called Anti-Riot Laws ‘Silly’ and ‘Asinine’

Democrat Georgia gubernatorial candidate and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms called anti-riot laws “silly” and “asinine” in 2022.

Bottoms — who oversaw a massive murder and crime spike during her time as Atlanta mayor, at the height of nationwide social justice protests —  criticized anti-riot laws during an interview with The Atlantic shortly after she ended her time in office. Bottoms announced in the summer of 2021 that she had decided not to run for reelection.

When asked, “What do you make of these proposals to stiffen penalties for public protest that become unruly or violent?” Bottoms called the laws “really silly.”

“And it really takes away from the real conversation and the need to have some real dialogue, some meaningful dialogue, on why people are in our streets protesting. Let’s have a conversation about the open carry law in Georgia and how protesters can walk with AK-47s down the street, and there’s no penalty for that. That scares me more than 100 college students protesting peacefully in the street,” Bottoms replied.

“I think when we peel back and we look at why were people in the streets in the summer of 2020, it was because we were witnessing something that we had never witnessed as a country as whole in my lifetime, and it was a need for a conversation and for real reform,” she continued.

“I hope that when you see policies and laws like that introduced wherever you are, it is this reminder of why elections matter. It’s not enough that we show up and we vote for the president,” she said. “We gotta show up each and every time when that state senator, when that local representative is on the ballot. Because if not, we have people speaking for us and setting laws for us that are completely asinine and not at all in touch with where we are and where we need to be as a country.”

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Savannah Car Fires Raise Gang Questions, But Officials Have Not Linked Them

A vehicle fire on the Talmadge Memorial Bridge shut down the bridge Friday evening. It came at the end of a week in which the city of Savannah and its residents grappled with the issue of gangs and gunfire. So far, however, no one has connected the fire to either issue.

The fire was brought under control by 7:16 p.m., according to fire officials. There were no injuries reported in the fire. Details regarding the cause of the fire have not been released by officials, reports WJCL.

Officials have not said the fire was arson, and so far there has been no connection made between the fire and any gang. Vehicles catch fire for many reasons and fire officials would have to investigate to determine the cause.

The question hangs over the city because of a shooting two weeks earlier in downtown Savannah. On Saturday, Sept. 26, officers of the Savannah Police Department were dispatched to a ShotSpotter alert near the parking lot of the Holiday Inn located on Bay Street. Upon arrival, they found that at least 27 rounds of ammunition had been fired and found 64 spent casings from four different calibers of ammunition as well as a handgun that had been fired, leaving several cars in the lot to sustain damage from the bullets. Although a person of interest was detained in connection with the incident, no arrests have been announced in connection with the shooting.

Chatham County Sheriff Richard Coleman called the shooting gang activity. “These behaviors are tied to gangs. They strike fear, they don’t care. And they’re reckless in their conduct,” he said. He has not found any physical evidence to confirm a gang link, WJCL reported, however.

The Sheriff announced a new gang enforcement unit on Oct. 1 and released a list of 18 different gangs he said are operating in the area. Of those listed, four are affiliated with the Crips, five are affiliated with the Bloods, and one is affiliated with the Vicelords, while the remaining eight are local “street gangs.” The Sheriff told gang members they had until that day to stop their activity.

Savannah Mayor Van Johnson called video of the shooting “disturbing and unacceptable” in a statement. He cautioned however that the Mayor’s Office would not present speculation as fact and the Savannah Police Department is investigating the case and has a gang unit already in place to investigate gang activity.

At least two vehicles are said to have burned in Savannah this week, but only the Talmadge Memorial Bridge fire has been extensively publicly reported so far. Police and the fire department have not said whether any are under investigation, and nothing in the public record links the fires to each other or to any gang. We will update this story as we learn more.

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Bodycam Footage of Georgia Cop Who Gunned Down Adorable Baby Donkey is Released – Blows Up His Stated ‘Reason’ for Killing the Animal

Police have finally released the body camera footage of the despicable Georgia cop who gunned down a baby donkey back in late August, and it destroys the disgusting lie he was trying to sell to the public.

As The Gateway Pundit previously reported, Elsberry farm owner Hannah Israel revealed that Cedartown, Georgia police officers entered her family’s pasture and killed her donkey HeeHaw after they perceived him as a “threat.”

In a post on Facebook, Israel wrote, “At 12:45 am cops entered my pasture searching for a missing person WITHOUT permission or warning and shot and killed my bottle-raised BABY donkey.”

She added, “HeeHaw was raised in the house and did petting zoos; he never knew a stranger. And was shot and killed in his OWN pasture for doing what donkeys do. Alerting to a stranger.”

At the time, the police had been reportedly called to assist a bloodhound team that was searching for a missing 12-year-old girl.

Trenton Garner, the officer who killed Heehaw, claimed taking the animal’s life was the only way to protect himself, the K-9 officer, and the team of bloodhounds.

Garner later stated that he informed his sergeant and the animal’s owner.

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Girl Wins $164 Million Lawsuit from Hotel in Sex-Trafficking Case

A federal court in Georgia has ordered a hotel to pay a female victim $164 million because it allowed a sex trafficking ring to operate on its premises.

The victim, who was 15 at the time of her trafficking, was reportedly held at the Super 8 hotel in College Park, Georgia, in 2020 and 2021, where she was sexually assaulted by her captors and their clients.

“They set up an environment for children to be sold,” said Patrick McDonough, the anonymous victim’s attorney, according to WAGA-TV. “This hotel operator would actually warn the traffickers if the police were coming.”

“Hey, look, if you’re going to turn a blind eye and profit off of children being sold, you’re going to be held accountable,” the attorney added, noting that the girl was held in the hotel for about 120 days.

The federal jury in the case determined that the owner of the hotel chain, Lincoln Bancorp LLC, would have to pay $44 million in compensatory damages and $120 million in punitive damages.

This is not the first hotel that has been held liable for sex trafficking in Georgia. Last year a $40 million verdict was returned against United Inn and Suites in DeKalb County. A woman who was 16 when she was trafficked sued the hotel and won, making it the first hotel in the Peach State to be found civilly liable for sex trafficking.

There are currently three other hotels being sued in civil court for sex trafficking in Georgia.

Georgia is not the only state where hotels are being accused of participating in sex trafficking.

According to the Lawsuit Information Center, there are currently two hotels in New Jersey being sued for cases of sex trafficking. Other cases include hotels in Los Angeles, Ohio, Philadelphia, and more.

Breitbart News has reported several cases of hotel and motel operators being accused of either facilitating or turning a blind eye to sex-trafficking going on in their establishments.

One such incident occurred in Virginia, where an Indian family with the last name of Sharma was arrested for allowing drug and sex trafficking to occur in their Red Carpet Inn hotel in Dumfries.

In another case, federal authorities in Nebraska carried out a series of raids, leading to the arrest of a group of Indian nationals who were allegedly engaged in an elaborate scheme involving sex, labor, and drug trafficking. In addition to multiple businesses owned by the suspected traffickers in Nebraska, the scheme also involved companies in Georgia and Texas.

In yet another case, Kavankumar Patel, an illegal migrant from India, was sentenced to a ten-year prison term for participating in a child sex-trafficking ring in Omaha, Nebraska, the Department of Justice announced.

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Georgia Election Board Asks Trump DOJ to Declare Statewide Dominion QR-Code Machines UNLAWFUL Before Midterms — Demands Six-Month Phase-Out as Raffensperger Stonewalls

Georgia’s Republican-controlled State Election Board has formally invited the Trump Department of Justice to step in and shut down the Peach State’s unverifiable, QR-code voting system before voters start casting ballots in the 2026 midterms.

In a September 30 letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche, State Election Board Executive Director James Mills asked the DOJ to prohibit the use of “unreadable, unverifiable QR-code-based vote tabulation and any other electronic tabulation method that does not permit the voter to verify the vote that is actually counted,” concerning Georgia’s Dominion voting system, now owned by Liberty Vote USA.

Mills also asked Blanche to set a binding six-month deadline, forcing Georgia to dump the machines and move to a system with voter-verifiable, hand-auditable paper records.

The letter, obtained and published by the Georgia Recorder, was copied to Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

According to the Georgia Recorder, the demand follows a September 28 resolution, introduced by GOP appointee Carolyn Roddy and passed 3-2, directing Mills to seek federal help forcing a software fix on the Dominion Democracy Suite 5.5-A system, the same equipment, now branded Liberty Vote, that Georgia rolled out statewide for the 2020 election. Early in-person voting begins October 13.

The letter does not stop at the machines. Mills asks the DOJ to open an investigation into Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office for withholding, blocking review of, and allegedly altering original election records, and for sharing Georgia motor-vehicle and voter-registration data with private vendors including ERIC and the Center for Election Innovation and Research.

He also wants a court-backed order requiring a forensic backup of election-management servers and Dominion scanners, then installation of a later EAC-certified software version, 5.17, 5.20, or newer, before November, with independent verification that CISA-documented vulnerabilities and the so-called DVSorder privacy flaw have actually been fixed.

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Bottoms: We Had Crime Spike in Atlanta When I Was Mayor in 2020 Due to Things Like ‘Social Justice Protests’

On Monday’s edition of CBS’s “The Takeout,” Democratic Georgia gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms responded to a question on crime during her tenure as the mayor of Atlanta by saying that there were drops in crime and then Atlanta “experienced spikes that we can only attribute to what was happening in 2020, between the social justice protests, between watching George Floyd be murdered before our eyes, in Georgia, watching Ahmaud Arbery be killed in the middle of the street, Breonna Taylor.”

Host and CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett asked, “So, you were mayor of Atlanta. Being governor of Georgia is a promotion. For every leader in this country, COVID and everything around it was a crucible of leadership. Everyone was tested, and everyone made mistakes, I think. You would agree with that? When you look back at that, as you ask for a promotion to be governor of Georgia, what would you want the voters of Georgia to know you would do better, do differently?”

Bottoms responded, “What I would say to the voters of Georgia is to remember I was the woman in the arena. I was making very tough decisions there was no blueprint for. But any leader worth her salt is going to always look back and wonder, could I have done something differently? Should I have done something –?”

Garrett then cut in to ask, “Have you identified an answer to that question?”

Bottoms responded, “There are a lot of things. Hindsight gives us this great lens that we don’t always have in the moment. So, there are things, big and small, that I wonder, should I have made a different decision, could I have made a different decision in that moment? But what I will say is that every decision that I made was based on what I truly believed to be the best decision in that moment, and just reminding people, even during that time, this huge economic downturn and all the uncertainty that came with the pandemic in 2020 and Trump 1.0, I still left the city with four years of balanced budgets. We didn’t lay off employees. We didn’t raise property taxes. We created a child savings account for our public school kindergarteners. We even closed the largest real estate transaction that’s currently the largest public-private partnership happening in the southeastern United States. And out of that, we created an affordable housing trust fund and created 7,000 units of affordable housing. So, there [was] a long list of accomplishments, even in the midst of all of the uncertainty that was happening in the world. But you don’t grow as a leader without doing your own self-assessment and considering how you can be better and stronger.”

Garrett then asked, “Your Republican opponent, Rick Jackson, hammers you on crime, and the crime rate rose in Atlanta. It rose nationwide in many urban areas. Public safety’s a part of a governor’s job. What would you say to the state — voters in the state of Georgia and the sheriffs across the counties of Georgia about your attitude and what you learned about public safety in that crucible of COVID?”

Bottoms answered, “Yeah. And it’s interesting, prior to COVID, I was being called a public safety mayor, because I had given our police and firefighters the largest pay increases they had ever received in the history of the city. I was very supportive of law enforcement. And then 2020 came, and Atlanta, like so many other cities across the country and across Georgia, experienced spikes that we can only attribute to what was happening in 2020, between the social justice protests, between watching George Floyd be murdered before our eyes, in Georgia, watching Ahmaud Arbery be killed in the middle of the street, Breonna Taylor. There was thing after thing after thing. But I can say, even in 2021, when we were still in the midst of the pandemic, my first meeting in the White House in the Oval Office with President Biden, we were there to talk about the rolling out of vaccines. There were governors, Republican leaders, governors and mayors, to talk about this rollout. And I took the opportunity to advocate for more funding, for federal funding for us to put towards public safety, because I knew that people were emerging from the pandemic in a way that we didn’t go into the pandemic. I remembered looking at a draft of my State of the City address that I was scheduled to give at the beginning of March of 2020, and we ended up canceling that address. But, in that draft, I had talked about these drops in our crime numbers and how well we were trending, and then there was 2020, summer of 2020.”

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Woke Georgia Democrat who’s running for governor by opposing school choice is caught sending her own children to $38k-a-year private academy

Democrat’s woke candidate for Georgia governor was caught sending her children to an elite $40,000-a-year academy despite her party’s staunch opposition to programs that help less wealthy students attend ‘unaccountable private entities’.

Keisha Lance Bottoms, 56, was revealed to have sent her children to Woodward Academy, a private institution with tuition upwards of $37,000 a year.

While Bottoms has not publicly outlined a position on school choice programs that allow students to use public funds for private tuition, the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG) strongly opposes the policy they call a ‘scam to siphon taxpayer money away from public schools’. 

‘While [Governor Brian Kemp] and his administration preside over a failed rollout of a failed idea, Georgia Democrats will keep fighting for a high quality, fully funded public school system that works for all students,’ said DPG in a statement slamming the Republican’s school choice program.   

Bottoms, meanwhile, has been a strong proponent of her party’s message that vows to increase funding for public schools, even as she sends her own children to the cushy private school in College Park.

The former mayor has already had two of her four children graduate from the academy. Tuition this year for her 15-year-old twins, who just recently posed in photos wearing the school’s uniforms and have profiles on the sports team, would cost nearly $80,000 for both.

While it is unclear how many years each of Bottoms’s children attended the school, the cost for a student to have a full 14-year career at Woodward Academy from pre-K to 12th grade graduation would cost $477,740.

Parents sending four children through 14 years at the private school would have a tuition bill just shy of $2 million under today’s rates. 

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Democrat Georgia Senate Candidate Who Co-Hosts Drag Shows Convicted of Child Cruelty After Beating 5-Year-Old With a Spatula — Sentenced to 7 Years

A Democrat nominee for the Georgia State Senate is heading to prison after a judge found him guilty of cruelty to children and battery for striking a 5-year-old girl at a daycare.

Justin Grant Gillespie, 41, of Hull, was sentenced last week to seven years, with two years to serve in state prison. The rest will be served on probation. He remains in the Madison County Jail.

According to the Athens Banner-Herald, Gillespie was convicted in a bench trial before Madison County Superior Court Judge Chris NeSmith. The charges stemmed from a Feb. 1, 2021, incident at Happy Kids Learning Center in Hull, where Gillespie worked.

Authorities said he hit the child in the lower back with a spatula, leaving a red, raised welt. The girl told investigators Gillespie was mad at her for not taking a nap. Gillespie admitted swinging the spatula but claimed he was on the phone and did not realize the child was standing nearby.

The parents discovered the wound and reported it to the Madison County Sheriff’s Office. Charges were filed in March 2021. The case dragged on for more than five years.

Gillespie showed up for a jury trial, fired his lawyer that day, hired another attorney, and chose a bench trial instead. During testimony from the victim’s family, Gillespie was seen rolling his eyes. The judge factored that conduct into the sentence, according to Northern Circuit District Attorney Parks White, as reported by 92.1 WLHR.

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Flock Safety Offers Buyouts As Abuse Scandal Deepens — Georgia Should Take Note

Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company that’s built a surveillance network of license plate readers across the country, is offering employees the chance to leave with a packet of cash and benefits in what the company is calling the “most generous” severance package ever offered, Wired reports.

The crisis for Flock Safety is centered around the misuse of its surveillance technology by law enforcement. In August The Washington Post detailed 46 instances of police officers using Flock cameras to track people including ex-girlfriends, wives, and even partners of domestic violence incidents. The revelations led to a firestorm of cancellations across the country.

Florida and Texas announced they would no longer use the license plate readers. An anti-surveillance group also said that 90 cities had dropped Flock contracts in August, a fourfold increase from the previous month. CEO Garrett Langley called the “biggest damage” to his company from the controversy to “internal morale.”

As for why this is a big story for Georgia, the Atlanta-based company is after all headquartered in the state where its extensive network of cameras across neighborhoods, highways, and smaller cities and towns is secretly monitoring the vast majority of vehicle travel. And Florida and Texas have seen enough to stop using the surveillance system.

For now, the voluntary buyout move by Flock Safety’s management is an effort to contain the crisis while avoiding the appearance of mass layoffs. However, the core question remains: who will watch the watchers when the largest surveillance company in the US discovers that there are limits to what the public at large, as well as the company’s employees, are willing to accept?

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