This bill seeks to make various disfavored protest activities, irrespective of their constitutionally protected status, prosecutable under Georgia’s RICO statute by greatly expanding the scope of Georgia’s hate crime law and making two or more violations of that statute a violation of Georgia’s RICO statute*.
*Like a similar federal law, Georgia has a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. These laws, largely passed to combat organized crime, enhance existing criminal punishments for certain racketeering activities and create new offenses for these activities done as part of a racketeering enterprise. The major difference between Georgia’s RICO statute and the federal RICO is that Georgia’s law, explained in brief below, is much broader and does not always require the existence of a racketeering enterprise.
The ACLU of Georgia strongly opposes this bill. Civil disobedience is fundamental to the people’s ability to effectively petition their Government, especially when decisions by the state cannot be effectively addressed through ballot box accountability. Georgia recognized that by expressly stating Georgia’s RICO statute will not be used to prosecute single misdemeanor acts or acts of civil disobedience. Inexplicably this law expressly weaponizes Georgia’s RICO statute to prosecute misdemeanor conduct as well as many commonly employed acts of civil disobedience.
