News / FJP Releases

May 14, 2026 (Atlanta, GA) — Fair and Just Prosecution firmly opposes Georgia House Bill 369, signed into law this week by Governor Brian Kemp, as an unconstitutional change in election law that uses artificially narrow classifications to target specific communities and elected officials, including district attorneys, without applying the same rules statewide.

The new law shifts district attorney and other local office elections to nonpartisan races in Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties beginning in 2028 and eliminates partisan primaries for those offices. It applies only to “consolidated law enforcement counties” where the office of county coroner has been abolished — a classification that currently impacts only those five counties. There is no clear connection between the absence of a county coroner’s office and whether prosecutor elections should be partisan or nonpartisan.

Georgia’s Constitution requires laws of a general nature to operate uniformly throughout the state and limits the legislature’s ability to enact local or special laws where a general law would apply. HB 369 raises serious questions about whether its classification reflects a genuine policy distinction or is a device for targeting five specific counties while bypassing those constitutional protections.

The law’s narrow geographic scope raises an additional concern: the only district attorneys affected are Black women serving some of Georgia’s largest and most diverse communities, and the office of sheriff is inexplicably exempted. While the removal of partisan labels appears facially neutral, the pattern of who bears its effects, combined with the decision not to apply the same rules statewide, warrants serious public scrutiny of whether the legislature’s purpose was legitimate and policy-driven or aimed at undermining the electoral choices of specific communities.

“Prosecutors make some of the most consequential decisions in the justice system, which is why elections for these offices should be governed by consistent and transparent rules,” said FJP Executive Director Aramis Donell Ayala. “Georgia’s Constitution places clear limits on laws that impose different rules on a small subset of counties where a general law could apply statewide. HB 369 departs from that constitutional principle without a clear justification. The people in these communities elected leaders who reflect their priorities and values, and those choices deserve the same respect afforded to voters everywhere else in Georgia. When lawmakers draw lines this narrowly, the public is right to question whether the law serves a legitimate purpose or is intended to produce a preferred political outcome.”