The Georgia First Amendment Foundation is asking the Supreme Court of Georgia to protect citizens’ rights to access judicial records by reversing lower court rulings.
In its petition to the Court, the foundation is seeking release of judicial records related to disputes between companies that won and lost licenses to manufacture medical cannabis in Georgia. In June 2022, a judge in the Georgia Office of State Administrative Hearings (OSAH) sealed in perpetuity all judicial records related to litigation that arose from the disputes. A judge in the Superior Court of Fulton County upheld the administrative court’s ruling in February. In April, the Appeals Court of Georgia declined to weigh the impact these lower court decisions could have on Georgians’ access to judicial records.
That led to the foundation’s petition to the Georgia Supreme Court, filed April 30. It details flaws in the lower courts’ decisions, and how those decisions harm the public’s right to know:
The foundation argues that the lower court rulings set a dangerous precedent “that when medical cannabis companies litigate their licensure rights in the State of Georgia, all judicial records relating to that dispute — without limitation or distinction — must be sealed, forever. Worse, the [lower court decisions hold] that the only parties who have standing to bring a legal challenge against a blanket seal are the parties involved in the dispute.”
“This bizarre holding is wildly out of alignment” with Georgia Supreme Court precedent supporting citizens’ right to inspect judicial records, according to the foundation’s petition. If the lower court decisions stand, “the hearing officers of a certain administrative court will be permitted to hear testimony, receive legal arguments, and issue opinions affecting the rights and health care of thousands of Georgians — all from behind a shield of unqualified, perpetual, inviolable secrecy, unlike that of any other tribunal in Georgia.”
Secret legal arguments, evidence and government decisions
If the lower court decisions stand, the licensure and related operations of medical cannabis commerce are, in practice, “secret government decisions, made upon secret legal arguments and secret evidence,” the foundation argues. “Georgia jurists will be constrained to hear appeals relating to the regulation and production of a controlled substance from within a newly created star chamber.”
In urging the Georgia Supreme Court’s reversal, the foundation argues that the collective impact of the lower court decisions “threatens the reputation and integrity of the judicial process by creating a rule that administrative tribunals are exempt from transparency, even when they are deciding the health care rights of millions of Georgians, and by further holding that no member of the public can challenge that rule.”
Wrestling with oversight, waiting for medication
Georgia lawmakers and courts have wrestled with oversight of the business of medical cannabis in Georgia since the Hope Act was passed in 2019. House Bill 196, which would make the Georgia Access to Medical Cannabis Commission subject to the state’s open meetings and open records laws, did not pass the 2023 legislative session. In late April, the cannabis commission granted licenses to allow two companies to begin selling low-THC oil to patients on Georgia’s medical cannabis registry; those patients had waited four years for access to the medication.
The Georgia First Amendment Foundation, established in 1994, is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that works to protect and expand Georgians’ access to public records, meetings and court proceedings, as well as their right to free speech. The foundation educates citizens, public officials, journalists and lawyers on these rights. Attorneys Joy Ramsingh and Gerry Weber, co-chair of GFAF’s Legal Committee, are leading the foundation’s legal efforts to increase transparency in the regulation of medical cannabis in Georgia.
