Court rejects challenge to Georgia campus carry law

A Superior Court judge has sided with the state in a lawsuit brought by a group of Georgia university professors seeking to suspend the state’s campus carry practices.

Fulton County Judge Kimberly Esmond Adams last week denied an injunction requested by the educators in a challenge that has been pending in the court for almost a year. Going against arguments voiced by the professors that they should be able to bar guns from their classes for various reasons, Adams rejected the case citing the defendants, Gov. Nathan Deal and state Attorney General Chris Carr, named in their official capacity, were exempt due to sovereign immunity.

The six professors filed their case last September, arguing the state’s new campus carry law, signed by Deal in after he vetoed a previous version, went against long-standing prohibitions at Georgia colleges and universities on guns, some dating back to 1810. Each had a specific example of how the law would affect their work, either through chilling vigorous class debates, or upping the chance of suicide, a tactic mirrored in a similar case in Texas that was likewise unsuccessful.