The STATE v. SASS GROUP, LLC (Two Cases)

Two Gwinnett County businesses that sold hemp-derived products like Delta-8-THC sued the State of Georgia and the Gwinnett County District Attorney after she announced she would prosecute sellers of such products as controlled substances. The businesses wanted a court ruling declaring their products legal and an order stopping enforcement action against them. A trial court blocked the district attorney from acting against the businesses and refused to dismiss the case, even though the State argued sovereign immunity, a constitutional protection shielding government from lawsuits absent a specific waiver, barred the suit. The Supreme Court of Georgia had to decide what a 2020 constitutional amendment meant when it said suits seeking this new type of waiver must be brought 'exclusively' against the State. The businesses argued this rule applied claim by claim; the State argued it applied to the whole lawsuit. The court agreed with the State, meaning that because the lawsuit also named the district attorney personally, the entire case had to be dismissed.

The court held that 'action' in the constitutional waiver provision means an entire lawsuit, not a single claim, so a suit filed under that provision that also names a defendant other than the State or an authorized local government must be dismissed in its entirety.

The ruling means Georgians who want to sue the State under this new constitutional waiver must file a separate, standalone lawsuit naming only the State, not combine it with claims against individual officials, or risk having their entire case thrown out regardless of its merits.

Reversed and remanded with direction that the case be dismissed

1. The court examined the ordinary meaning of the word 'action' as understood by the public when the 2020 constitutional amendment was adopted, looking at dictionaries from that era and finding that 'action' typically means an entire lawsuit or proceeding, while 'claim' refers to a specific demand within that lawsuit.
2. The court looked at how Georgia courts and statutes commonly use the word 'action' and found it is overwhelmingly used to mean a whole case rather than an individual claim, reinforcing the dictionary definitions.
3. The court compared other parts of the Georgia Constitution that use both 'action' and 'claim' in the same sentence, reasoning that if the drafters used both words they must mean different things, since courts avoid readings that make one word meaningless (a principle against surplusage).
4. The court considered another provision in the same paragraph barring attorney's fees or damages 'in an action,' concluding this phrasing only makes sense if 'action' means the whole lawsuit, since such awards are typically given at the end of a case, not for a single claim.
5. The court explained that reading 'action' this way, requiring plaintiffs to sue the State alone in a separate lawsuit rather than combining claims against other officials, fits the history of Georgia's sovereign immunity doctrine, including a prior decision (Lathrop v. Deal) that barred suits against state officials in their official capacities and pushed the state toward this narrow, limited waiver.
6. Applying this rule, the court found that because the hemp sellers' lawsuit named both the State and the district attorney individually, and the claim against the State depended on the new waiver, the entire lawsuit failed the exclusivity requirement and had to be dismissed.

• sovereign immunity
• hemp and Delta-8-THC
• declaratory judgment
• Gwinnett County District Attorney
• constitutional amendment interpretation