Crossover Day marked the beginning of the end of this year’s legislative session. Beyond being the point when bills must pass out of their respective chambers to remain alive, last Thursday further clarified this legislature’s priorities. By the end of last year, one topic emerged as the frontrunner as the session’s central issue: tort reform.
Tort Reform
Reforming Georgia’s legal landscape is a top priority for Gov. Brian Kemp and many key lawmakers. Over the past few years, Georgia’s tort system gained infamy for its numerous high-profile frivolous lawsuits, nuclear verdicts and exploitations of unfair or predatory litigation practices. This is not to mention the economic costs that lawsuit abuse places on Georgians, a phenomenon documented by the Foundation and many others.
The effort to reform Georgia’s legal environment led to the passage of two Senate bills that now head to the House. Senate Bill 68 includes a wide range of changes, including limiting premises liability – liability placed on property owners for crimes committed on their property that they had nothing to do with – and eliminating “phantom damages” by requiring a truthful calculation of damages incurred instead of what a patient was billed for medical care. The bill amends procedures with fairer outcomes in mind, such as allowing for trials to be more easily split into stages for the separate determination of liability and damages, and allowing jurors to know whether a plaintiff was wearing his or her seatbelt in an auto accident.
The Senate’s other tort bill, Senate Bill 69, passes the Senate unanimously. Senate Bill 69 is more specific in scope as it seeks to limit third-party litigation financing. The Foundation has also covered the various issues brought about by outside funding of tort lawsuits,like a lack of transparency, predatory lending practices and the threat of interference from foreign actors. While Senate Bill 69 was passed unanimously in its original chamber, Senate Bill 69 is likely to face a contentious fight in the House.
The wide scope of this legislative effort indicates a landscape of problems throughout Georgia’s tort system, which reform advocates consistently rate among the worst in the country. Beyond sweeping policy proposals, the political aspect of tort reform in this year’s session is noteworthy as well. This included the creation of a new Subcommittee of Rules on Lawsuit Reform, to which the two bills were assigned, and has led to days’ worth of testimony from advocates on both sides of this issue. Additionally, Gov. Kemp threatened to call a special session if his legislation doesn’t pass, and one of his political advisers suggested Kemp may support primary challenges against lawmakers who oppose the bills.
Regulatory Reform
Another priority issue that ran the pre-Crossover Day gauntlet was regulatory reform: an attempt to reduce unnecessary burdens in Georgia’s code and change the way regulations are enacted and maintained moving forward. This manifested in the Red Tape Rollback Act of 2025, or Senate Bill 28.
Regulatory reform was highlighted as a priority by the lieutenant governor’s office earlier this year when it was likened to a state-level version of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the federal effort to cut waste headed by Elon Musk. However, the proposals in the General Assembly are not practically similar to DOGE beyond a sentiment for cutting inefficiencies. Similar reforms to Georgia’s bill can be found in other states, having been implemented by both executive and legislative actions.
Georgia lawmakers recognized the issue that, despite the legislative branch’s duty to pass laws, most of Georgia’s regulations come from unelected bureaucrats in agencies that make up the executive branch. Georgia’s regulatory code has grown nearly every year since the state began tracking regulations, and many of them are now irrelevant, redundant or overly burdensome.
Senate Bill 28 would require agencies to perform periodic, top-to-bottom reviews in order to eliminate unnecessary rules and provide an economic impact analysis to the General Assembly if a proposed rule is estimated to cost over $1 million over five years after implementation. It also seeks to specifically reduce burdens on small businesses, which often face the heaviest burdens and have the most difficulty navigating the regulatory code.
While eliminating redundancies and burdens in the code is important, this bill seeks a more fundamental change. By ensuring that the purposes and necessities of proposed and active regulations are justified before and during their lifetimes, Georgia can curb the inertia typical of the administrative state, which tends to grow over time if unchecked.
Education
The central issue of the 2023-24 session was undoubtedly the fight over expanding K-12 opportunities, specifically with the passage of the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act. Given this, it was unlikely that education would take center stage again. However, there was plenty of work to be done, both in building on last year’s successes and in other areas.
As for the Promise Scholarship, the Senate passed legislation that will expand access to children of foster parents (Senate Bill 152) and children of active duty military families (Senate Bill 124). As the Promise Scholarship only recently opened applications, it will be interesting to see how lawmakers plan to sustain and expand the program. Issues in maintaining it have already sprung up in this session, as the House removed almost $100 million of its funding. However, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones has since stated that the Senate would restore the funding.
Other areas of education policy that lawmakers have addressed include a requirement that the State Board of Education publish the federal guidance and guidelines it receives (added as an amendment to Senate Bill 124). The House approved an increase in the annual tax credits available for the state’s tax credit scholarship program from $120 million per year to $140 million, though this increase was amended from a previously proposed $200 million. The Senate passed the “Local Charter School Authorization and Support Act of 2025,” which incentivizes local boards of education to approve new charter schools. This move is timely given Georgia’s shortcomings in providing access to charter schools and that only one public charter school has been approved in Georgia over the past five years.
For many of the bills that managed to cross over, the toughest fight lies ahead. Lawmakers and Gov. Kemp have made their top priorities clear, and we’re now in the home stretch to see what makes it to the governor’s desk before Sine Die on April 4.
