The exact role of the attorney general has been a matter of debate in the past. “If you don’t like our laws, you should run for the Legislature, not for DA or Attorney General.” “Preemptively announcing that you will not enforce or defend certain laws is not prosecutorial discretion, it’s dereliction of duty,” Carr said. He has been vocal in denouncing the local DAs who said they won’t enforce it - and, in a statement to the AJC, said the same about Jordan. Shortly after the Dobbs decision was announced, he filed a motion before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals requesting that the law be allowed to take effect. “It’s about using your discretion in a way that your community wants you to do.”Ĭarr has made his priorities clear when it comes to the 6-week abortion ban. Jordan also made the case that Chris Carr, the current Republican attorney general, isn’t talking about defending every law in Georgia, such as the laws that ban adultery and fornication, which she explained are still technically illegal in Georgia. I’m not going to prosecute women just because they’re making healthcare decisions that they need to make for their bodies.’”

“We’ve had really brave prosecutors stand up in these various counties to say, ‘What are you talking about? I’m going to use my prosecutorial discretion. It’s entirely within the attorney general’s prerogative to say the law is enforceable, but I’m not defending it.”Īt a recent event with abortion activists in East Atlanta, Jordan said as much and praised the local district attorneys for saying they won’t go along with H.B. In that same vein, district attorneys also have a long precedent of deciding which crimes to prioritize for prosecution, with limited resources for lawyers and courts.Īnd at the state level, he said, “The attorney general’s office will certainly be asked to defend the constitutionality of HB 481, if and when there are challenges in state or federal court. Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, said that cities have long had the discretion to funnel resources in the way that they think is best for the benefit of their citizens.

Most legal and legislative experts I spoke with agreed that it’s within city and county officials’ authority to generally opt-out of their piece of enforcing the law.īut those same experts said it likely won’t keep the law from achieving its goal of drastically reducing women’s access to abortion in Georgia - and it won’t keep the issue from being the subject of heated debates and possibly new litigation to prove otherwise, especially in the case of the state attorney general.ĭr. With each announcement, my own inbox filled up with two primary questions from AJC readers - Is all of that legal? And will it matter?Ĭan district attorneys choose not to prosecute people who may have broken the law? Are local governments allowed to effectively ignore a state law their elected officials don’t support? And can a state attorney general refuse to defend a law if it’s challenged in court? The answers are yes, yes, and it depends on who you ask.

Star citizen issue council