ATLANTA — A recent ruling by the Georgia Supreme Court said blanket immunity from paying to fix what officers break was gone.
The case started with a state drug raid operation in 2021, when a hemp farmer’s business was damaged when the Georgia Department of Public Safety flew helicopters over his fields, damaging crops and allegedly threatening his lease on the property.
Immunity still exists, but the Supreme Court ruled that it cannot be so broad as to be universal for all police activities.
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Blue 42 Organics, a licensed hemp growing company and farm in Dahlonega, sued after the Governor’s Drug Suppression Task Force operation led to more than $37,000 in damage.
Previous court rulings had maintained protection from liability for law enforcement, based on a long-standing Georgia provision called the Just Compensation Clause, but the Georgia Supreme Court ruled to reverse that precedent.
The GSC reversed that, writing that the full scope of police power when weighed against the state’s constitutional protections for personal property meant that officers and agencies could no longer be barred from having liability for damage.
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The court wrote that “police power’ is exceptionally broad and extends far beyond law enforcement activity. Nothing in the text or history of the Just Compensation Clause supports a categorical exemption for all exercises of the police power.”
The ruling allows for some potential recourse for those who have property damaged in the course of law enforcement activity.
According to the justices, only two categories clearly provide immunity for police power-related damages:
- Abatement of nuisances
- Destruction of property in cases of urgent necessity
The Court announced this change of legal precedent while deciding whether DPS would have to pay anything for damaging the hemp farm during its drug raid.
“During the operation, DPS flew helicopters and a fixed-wing aircraft at a low altitude, resulting in the destruction of two rows of Blue 42’s crops valued at about $37,000,” according to the court record. “Blue 42 also claimed that its future renewals of leasing of land for grazing was jeopardized by DPS’s actions, because cattle on the land were harassed by the low flying aircraft.”
Prior decisions in the Georgia Court of Appeals “held that the State’s exercise of the police power is categorically exempt” from statutes ordering “private property shall not be taken or damaged for public purposes without just and adequate compensation being first paid.”
The GSC said that those interpretations, full immunity from liability, would pose “serious danger” to the private rights of Georgia citizens and said it was allowed too much of a shield to stand.
“Although the government is not required to pay for destroying or damaging private property when exercising the police power under certain circumstances, those circumstances are quite limited,” the court wrote. “...given the exceptional breadth of the State’s police power, a rule exempting all exercise of that power from the Just Compensation Clause would pose serious danger to the private property rights our Constitution protects.”
The case can now return to a lower court for Blue 42 to seek relief.
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