LOVELL v. RAFFENSPERGER

Kristen Lovell sued Georgia's Secretary of State and members of the Columbia County Board of Elections, and separately Lori Tullos and Virginia McFaddin sued the Secretary of State and members of the Morgan County Board of Elections and Registration. Both groups, representing themselves without lawyers, asked the superior courts for declaratory judgments and injunctions related to election matters. The trial courts in Columbia and Morgan Counties dismissed the cases, ruling that the lawsuits were barred by sovereign immunity, a legal protection that shields government from being sued unless it agrees to allow it, because the plaintiffs had not sued the right parties under a provision of the Georgia Constitution. The Supreme Court of Georgia consolidated the two appeals and agreed with the trial courts. It held that this constitutional provision only waives sovereign immunity when a lawsuit is brought exclusively against the State of Georgia itself, or exclusively against the relevant county, and not against individual officials or local boards by name. Because both sets of plaintiffs sued individual officials and boards rather than the State or the counties themselves, their lawsuits were properly dismissed.

The court held that Paragraph V's limited waiver of sovereign immunity requires a lawsuit to be brought exclusively against, and in the name of, the State of Georgia or the relevant local government; naming individual officials or local boards instead does not satisfy this requirement, and any noncompliant lawsuit must be dismissed entirely.

The ruling makes clear that Georgians who want to sue over state or local government action, including election disputes, must name the State of Georgia or the specific local government as the defendant, not individual officials or boards, or risk having their entire case thrown out.

Judgments affirmed

1. The court explained that Paragraph V of the Georgia Constitution, a provision that partially removes the government's usual immunity from lawsuits, only waives sovereign immunity for declaratory judgment actions brought against the state or listed government entities in the way the provision specifies.
2. Because both sets of plaintiffs relied at least in part on this waiver to bring their claims, their entire lawsuits counted as actions filed under Paragraph V, meaning the whole case, not just some claims, had to follow its rules or be dismissed.
3. The court looked at the plain wording of Paragraph V, which requires such lawsuits to be brought exclusively against the state or local government and in the name of the State of Georgia or the relevant county, and said naming any other individual or entity requires dismissal.
4. Drawing on other Georgia statutes that use the phrase 'in the name of' to mean the formal party listed in a lawsuit, the court concluded that Paragraph V requires plaintiffs to formally name the State of Georgia or the county itself as the defendant, not officials or local boards, even when those officials are sued only in their official capacity.
5. Applying this reading to the facts, the court found that both lawsuits named the Secretary of State and county election board members rather than the State of Georgia or the counties themselves, so neither lawsuit met Paragraph V's requirements and both were correctly dismissed.

• sovereign immunity
• election lawsuits
• Secretary of State
• county boards of elections
• Georgia Constitution