A second metro Atlanta district attorney is pushing back against a law that would remove partisan affiliations from seats up for election in some of Georgia’s most liberal counties.
Gwinnett County District Attorney Patsy Austin-Gatson said she filed a lawsuit contesting the controversial House Bill 369, a law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in May that makes district attorneys and other key local offices nonpartisan in five core metro Atlanta counties.
“I felt that I have an obligation to stand up for this community in the face of a law that encroaches on my duty as an elected official,” Austin-Gatson said at a news conference Friday.
The law makes all elected county positions in a “consolidated law enforcement county” subject to nonpartisan elections. It defines such a county as one where the elected office of coroner has been abolished.
Only five of Georgia’s 159 counties have abolished the coroner position in favor of a medical examiner. Those counties are Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb and Clayton.
The law has been framed as an effort to depoliticize local offices. But some Democrat leaders say the law disproportionately impacts Black elected leaders in Georgia’s most populous region.
Credit: Ben Hendren
Credit: Ben Hendren
Austin-Gatson called it “strange and prejudicial.” All five counties to which the law applies have Black Democratic women serving as district attorney.
“I am the first African American who has ever had the position of district attorney in the history of Gwinnett County,” Austin-Gatson said. “Therefore, I have a duty to stand up and fight against what I believe to be unjust and racially discriminatory legislation.”
The civil filing comes months after DeKalb District Attorney Sherry Boston filed a suit against the law, calling it “clearly unconstitutional.”
Boston, chair of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Association of Georgia, announced the litigation during a news conference where she was flanked by district attorneys Fani Willis of Fulton County, Sonya Allen of Cobb County and Tasha Mosley of Clayton County.
“We have all been united from the very beginning of this fight, and as a group we made the decision that I was best positioned to take on this fight,” Boston said.
Austin-Gatson was absent from that news conference. At the time, Boston said her Gwinnett counterpart was in support of the lawsuit but had taken a back seat in the fight out of respect for her role on the board of the statewide district attorneys’ association, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.
After filing a lawsuit of her own, Austin-Gatson said she has been supportive of the litigation from the beginning.
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