In the Supreme Court of Georgia

Decided: February 20, 2024

S23A0821. WOODS et al. v. BARNES et al.

S23A0822. BEARDEN et al. v. BARNES et al.

 COLVIN, Justice.

The Fair Dismissal Act (“FDA”), codified within Title 20 of the 

Georgia Code, affords public school teachers who have “accept[ed] a 

school year contract for the fourth consecutive school year from the 

same local board of education” certain protections against demotion 

and the nonrenewal of their contracts. OCGA § 20-2-942 (b) (1). 

Among other things, the FDA provides that such a teacher “may be 

demoted or the teacher’s contract may not be renewed only for those 

reasons set forth in [OCGA § 20-2-940 (a)],” id., including

“[i]ncompetency,” “[i]nsubordination,” and “[w]illful neglect of 

duties,” OCGA § 20-2-940 (a), and that, prior to the demotion or 

nonrenewal of such a teacher’s contract, the teacher is entitled to 
2

notice and an opportunity for a hearing, see OCGA § 20-2-942 (b) (2).

The Charter Schools Act of 1993, however, included a waiver 

provision that relieved public schools that had converted into public 

charter schools of the obligation to comply with Title 20. See Ga. L. 

1993, p. 1440, § 1. And that Title 20 waiver remains part of Georgia’s 

statutory scheme today under the Charter Schools Act of 1998, see 

Ga. L. 1998, pp. 1082, 1086, § 3, as amended by the Charter Systems 

Act of 2007, see Ga. L. 2007, pp. 185, 191, § 8. Specifically, as 

amended by the Charter Systems Act, the Charter Schools Act’s

waiver provision states that “a charter school, or for charter 

systems, each school within the system, shall not be subject to the 

provisions of [Title 20 of the Georgia Code],” and that “[a] waiver 

granted pursuant to this Code section for a charter system shall 

apply to each system charter school within the system.” OCGA § 20-

2-2065 (a).

This case involves challenges to the Charter Schools Act’s

waiver provision, as amended by the Charter Systems Act, under 

the Georgia Constitution’s Impairments Clause, which prohibits 
3

retroactive laws and laws that impair the obligation of contracts. See 

Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. X (providing that “[n]o . . . 

retroactive law, or laws impairing the obligation of contract . . . shall 

be passed”). Specifically, Plaintiffs claim that the amended version 

of the waiver provision, as applied to Fannin County School System 

(“FCSS”) educators who earned FDA protections after the 

enactment of the first Charter Schools Act in 1993 but before the 

FCSS converted into a charter school system in 2015,

unconstitutionally impaired such teachers’ vested property rights 

and contract rights under the FDA. 

We hold that, as presented, Plaintiffs’ constitutional claims fail 

as a matter of law. Plaintiffs’ claims necessarily presume that the 

grant of a Title 20 waiver to charter schools within the FCSS 

pursuant to the 2007 Charter Systems Act prevented FCSS 

educators who had earned FDA rights between the enactment date 

of the 1993 Charter Schools Act and the date that the FCSS 

converted into a charter system in 2015 from enforcing those rights 
4

against the FCSS.1 Assuming without deciding that this 

presumption is true, a grant of a Title 20 waiver for the FCSS did 

not impair any rights belonging to such teachers. As explained 

below, when the General Assembly first authorized the creation of 

public charter schools through the Charter Schools Act of 1993, it 

granted charter schools a waiver from their obligation to comply 

with Title 20. That waiver qualified any rights teachers could

subsequently earn under Title 20, clarifying that any such rights 

were not enforceable against charter schools. And later versions of, 

and amendments to, the Charter Schools Act, including the Charter 

Schools Act of 1998, as amended by the Charter Systems Act of 2007, 

have not materially changed the waiver provision. Thus, to the 

extent that Georgia statutory law imposed limitations on teachers’ 

1 Plaintiffs’ Impairment Clause claims—that a “retroactive law” or a 

“law[ ] impairing the obligation of contract” was “passed,” Ga. Const. of 1983, 

Art. I, Sec. I, Par. X (emphasis supplied)—are necessarily premised on the 

assumption that the Charter Systems Act’s waiver provision granting a Title 

20 waiver to charter schools within a charter system (the law at issue) waives 

the obligation of a charter system, which employs teachers, to abide by the 

FDA. Absent such an assumption, Plaintiffs could not point to a law that 

impaired FCSS teachers’ rights. Because we can resolve the issues on appeal 

without resolving whether the necessary assumption underlying Plaintiffs’ 

claims is correct, we express no view on that matter. 
5

FDA rights, it was the 1993 Charter Schools Act that imposed those 

limitations, not, as Plaintiffs claim, the 2007 Charter Systems Act.

Because we conclude that Plaintiffs’ Impairment Clause claims fail 

as a matter of law, we reverse the judgment of the trial court.

In reaching this conclusion, we express no opinion as to 

whether the waiver provisions of the 1993 Charter Schools Act, the 

1998 Charter Schools Act, or the 2007 Charter Systems Act violate 

the Georgia Constitution’s Impairment Clause as applied to 

teachers who earned FDA protections before the enactment of the 

1993 Charter Schools Act. This is because the record on appeal does 

not show that the class of teachers employed by the FCSS on whose 

behalf the Georgia Association of Educators sued in this case 

includes any such teachers; Plaintiffs have not raised any 

arguments specific to any such teachers; and, despite State 

Defendants conceding that “it is at least conceivable that a teacher 

who gained Fair Dismissal Act protections prior to 1993 could have 

mounted a retroactivity challenge to the original Charter Schools 

Act,” Plaintiffs have insisted that they are not claiming that the 
6

Charter Schools Acts of 1993 or 1998 unconstitutionally impaired 

FCSS teachers’ FDA rights.2

1. In 2018, public school teacher Rebecca Barnes and the 

Georgia Association of Educators (“Plaintiffs”) filed suit against 

state and local education officials in their individual capacities 

(“State Defendants” and “Local Defendants,” respectively). In their 

amended complaint, Plaintiffs alleged that Barnes accepted a fourth 

consecutive contract of employment with the Fannin County Board 

of Education at the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year and 

worked for the FCSS through the 2016-2017 school year; the FCSS 

converted into a charter school system with the approval of the local 

and state boards of education in 2015; the charter agreement 

governing the FCSS granted the FCSS “the maximum flexibility 

2 Specifically, Plaintiffs state that: “the relevant law—the law that 

purportedly authorized the stripping of [plaintiff-teacher] Barnes’s FDA 

rights—is the Charter Systems Act of 2007”; “the relevant statutory provisions 

here—the ones against which Plaintiffs’ as-applied challenge is directed—are 

(and have been throughout this litigation) those of the Charter Systems Act of 

2007, and never the 1993 iteration of the Charter Schools Act”; and “State 

Defendants erroneously suggest that the law at issue here is the Charter 

Schools Act, first piloted in 1993 and then comprehensively revamped in 1998.” 

(Emphasis in original.)
7

allowed by state law from the provisions of Title 20” pursuant to the 

Charter Systems Act of 2007; the FCSS notified Barnes in May 2017 

that her contract of employment would not be renewed for the 2017-

2018 school year; the notice did not provide the reasons for the 

nonrenewal of Barnes’s contract or an opportunity for a hearing, as 

required by the FDA; and Barnes’s employment terminated at the 

end of the 2016-2017 school year. Plaintiffs asserted that, by 

terminating Barnes without honoring the FDA rights she had 

earned prior to the FCSS’s conversion into a charter system in 2015, 

the FCSS, acting pursuant to its charter with the State Board of 

Education, “inflicted injurious retroactive effects on Barnes’s vested 

rights” and “impaired Barnes’s contractual rights” in violation of the 

Georgia Constitution’s Impairment Clause. As relief, Plaintiffs 

sought declarations that Barnes’s termination and the FCSS’s 

operation as a charter school system without preserving previouslyearned FDA rights violated the Georgia Constitution’s Impairment 

Clause, an injunction compelling the FCSS to reinstate Barnes with 

backpay and to honor her FDA rights, and an order enjoining the 
8

FCSS and the State Board of Education from denying FDA rights to 

educators employed by the FCSS who had earned FDA protections 

before the FCSS’s conversion into a charter school system.3

Following an appeal to the Court of Appeals and a remand, see 

generally Barnes v. Bearden, 357 Ga. App. 99 (850 SE2d 181) (2020), 

State Defendants filed a renewed motion to dismiss for failure to 

state a claim, Plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment, and 

Local Defendants filed a cross motion for summary judgment. On 

February 1, 2023, the trial court ruled in favor of Plaintiffs and 

against Defendants, denying State Defendants’ renewed motion to 

dismiss, granting Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, and 

denying Local Defendants’ cross motion for summary judgment. In 

short, the trial court concluded that the FDA afforded Barnes and 

similarly situated FCSS teachers certain property and contractual 

rights that vested before the FCSS converted into a charter system

in 2015; that, as applied to those teachers, the 2007 Charter Systems 

3 The Georgia Association of Educators sued on behalf of their members 

working at FCSS schools who were “similarly situated” to Barnes.
9

Act’s waiver provision impaired those FDA rights; and that, by 

waiving FDA rights, the Charter Systems Act violated the Georgia 

Constitution’s prohibition on the passage of retroactive laws and 

laws impairing contracts. Consistent with these rulings, the trial 

court declared the Charter Systems Act’s waiver provision

unconstitutional as applied to FCSS educators who had earned FDA 

rights prior to FCSS’s conversion into a charter school system, 

permanently enjoined Defendants from enforcing the Charter 

Systems Act’s FDA-waiver provision against Barnes and educators 

employed by FCSS who had earned protections of the FDA prior to 

the FCSS’s conversion into a charter school system, and ordered 

Defendants to reinstate Barnes’s employment. State and Local 

Defendants each appealed from the trial court’s order, and their 

appeals have been docketed as Case Nos. S23A0821 and S23A0822, 

respectively.

2. The Georgia Constitution’s Impairment Clause provides 

that “[n]o . . . retroactive law, or laws impairing the obligation of 

contract . . . shall be passed.” Ga. Const. of 1983, Art. I, Sec. I, Par. 
10

X. This Clause “forbids statutes that apply retroactively so as to 

injuriously affect the vested rights of citizens.” Deal v. Coleman, 294 

Ga. 170, 175 (2) (751 SE2d 337) (2013) (citation and punctuation 

omitted). “Establishing a violation of Georgia’s impairment clause, 

under either a theory of contractual impairment or a theory of 

retroactivity, requires the complaining party to show that a vested 

right is at stake.” Polo Golf & Country Club Homeowners Assn., Inc. 

v. Cunard, 306 Ga. 788, 793 (2) (b) (833 SE2d 505) (2019). “To 

determine whether there has been a violation of Georgia’s 

impairment clause, courts in this state will consider whether a 

vested right exists and then whether that vested right has been 

injuriously affected by the law in question.” Id. at 793-794 (2) (b) 

(citation and punctuation omitted).

Here, as presented, Plaintiffs’ Impairment Clause claims fail 

as a matter of law, and the trial court erred in concluding otherwise. 

The problem with Plaintiffs’ claims is that they rely on the FDA as 

the source of the rights that they assert were impaired by the 

Charter Systems Act, but, as explained below, Plaintiffs ignore the 
11

FDA’s statutory and historical context in construing the nature of 

the rights afforded by the FDA. And that context shows that the 

passage of the Charter Schools Act of 1993 qualified any rights

earned between that Act’s enactment date and the FCSS’s 

conversion into a charter system.

As we have explained, when interpreting a statutory provision, 

“[w]e must give the statutory text its plain and ordinary meaning, 

. . . reading it in its most natural and reasonable way.” In the Interest 

of T. B., 313 Ga. 846, 850 (3) (874 SE2d 101) (2022) (citation and 

punctuation omitted). To that end, and because “the primary 

determinant of a text’s meaning is its context,” Camp v. Williams, 

314 Ga. 699, 703 (2) (b) (879 SE2d 88) (2022) (citation and 

punctuation omitted), we interpret statutory text “in the context in 

which it appears,” including “the structure and history of the whole 

statute, and the other law—constitutional, statutory, and common 

law alike—that forms the legal background of the statutory 

provision in question.” Ford Motor Co. v. Cosper, 317 Ga. 356, 359

(2) (893 SE2d 106) (2023) (citations and punctuation omitted). And 
12

we seek to “construe[ ] together and harmonize[ ]” the statute in 

question with other “statutes relating to the same subject matter.”

T. B., 313 Ga. at 853 (3) (citation and punctuation omitted).

As explained below, applying these principles, we conclude 

that, even assuming that FCSS teachers like Barnes earned FDA 

rights after the enactment of the 1993 Charter Schools Act that

vested before FCSS’s conversion into a charter system in 2015, the 

Charter Systems Act did not injuriously affect those rights. This is 

because the 1993 Charter Schools Act waived any obligation that 

charter schools otherwise would have had to comply with the FDA, 

clarifying that teachers could subsequently earn at most qualified 

FDA rights that were not enforceable against charter schools. And 

the Charter Systems Act did not materially change the Charter 

Schools Act’s waiver provision. Thus, assuming without deciding 

that, as Plaintiffs presume, the Charter Systems Act’s provision 

granting a Title 20 waiver to charter schools within a charter system 

relieves the school system of the obligation to comply with the FDA,

the Charter Systems Act did not impair any FDA rights belonging 
13

to such teachers. 

(a) In determining what rights the FDA affords teachers, we 

begin with the language of the FDA itself. See State v. Henry, 312 

Ga. 632, 636 (3) (a) (864 SE2d 415) (2021) (“[W]e look first to the 

plain language of the statute . . . .”). The relevant provisions of the 

FDA state that: “[a] teacher who accepts a school year contract for 

the fourth consecutive school year from the same local board of 

education may be demoted or the teacher’s contract may not be 

renewed only for those reasons set forth in subsection (a) of Code 

Section 20-2-940”; that, “[i]n order to demote or fail to renew the 

contract of a teacher who accepts a school year contract for the 

fourth or subsequent consecutive school year from the same local 

board of education, the teacher must be given written notice of the 

intention to demote or not renew the contract of the teacher”; and 

that, before a teacher who has accepted a fourth or subsequent 

school year contract from the same local board of education can “be 

demoted or [have] his or her contract . . . not be renewed,” the 

teacher “has the right to the procedures set forth in subsections (b) 
14

through (f) of Code Section 20-2-940,” including an opportunity for a 

hearing. OCGA § 20-2-942 (b) (1), (2).

As these provisions illustrate, the FDA speaks in general terms 

about employment protections enjoyed by teachers who accept a 

fourth consecutive school year contract from the same local school 

board. As a result, reading these provisions in isolation might lead

one to conclude that the FDA affords such teachers unqualified 

rights.

However, “as we have said many times before when 

interpreting legal text, we do not read [that text] in isolation, but 

rather in context.” Camp, 314 Ga. at 703 (2) (b) (citation and 

punctuation omitted). And as explained below, reading the FDA in 

its historical context, alongside the development of the Charter 

Schools Act, reveals that the Charter Schools Act of 1993 qualified 

any rights teachers could subsequently earn under the FDA.

The FDA was enacted in 1975 to, among other things, “define 

the grounds for termination of the contracts of [public-school] 

teachers . . . having a contract for a definite term.” Ga. L. 1975, p. 
15

360. Specifically, Section 1 (a) of the FDA provided that “[t]he 

contract of employment of a teacher . . . having a contract for a 

definite term may be terminated or suspended” only for certain 

enumerated reasons, including, for example, “[i]ncompetency,”

“[i]nsubordination,” or “[w]illful neglect of duties.” Ga. L. 1975, p. 

360, § 1 (emphasis supplied).4

In 1982, the FDA was amended to afford additional protections 

to teachers who accepted a fourth consecutive school year contract

from the same local school board. As amended in 1982, the FDA

provided that the enumerated grounds for terminating or 

suspending a teacher were also the sole grounds on which such a 

teacher could be demoted or the teacher’s contract could not be 

renewed for a subsequent school year. See Ga. L. 1982, pp. 2188,

2190, § 1 (“A teacher who accepts a school year contract for the 

fourth consecutive school year from the same local board of 

education may be demoted or the teacher’s contract may not be 

4 This provision is currently codified at OCGA § 20-2-940 (a) with minor 

alterations not relevant here.
16

renewed only for those reasons set forth in subsection (a) of Section 

1 of this Act.”). As noted above, this provision of Title 20 is now 

codified at OCGA § 20-2-942 (b) (1) with minor alterations not 

relevant here.

The 1982 amendment also afforded teachers who accepted a 

fourth consecutive school year contract from the same local board 

certain rights to notice and a hearing before being demoted or not 

having their contracts renewed for a subsequent school year. See Ga. 

L. 1982, pp. 2188, 2190, § 1 (“A teacher who accepts a school year 

contract for the fourth consecutive school year from the same local 

board of education and who is notified that he or she is to be demoted 

or that his or her contract will not be renewed has the right to the 

procedures set forth in subsections (b) through (f) of Section 1 of this 

Act before the intended action is taken.”). While this provision has 

been amended over the years, the current version of the FDA 

continues to afford teachers these general rights, as noted above. See 

OCGA § 20-2-942 (b) (2).

In 1993, the General Assembly enacted the first Charter 
17

Schools Act, a statutory scheme within Title 20 of the Georgia Code 

that authorized the creation of public charter schools governed by “a 

binding performance based contract approved by both state and local 

boards of education, called a charter.” Ga. L. 1993, pp. 1440-1441, 

§ 1. The Charter Schools Act of 1993 permitted individual public 

schools to convert into public charter schools and waived the 

requirement that charter schools comply with Title 20’s 

requirements, providing that “[e]ach performance based contract 

will exempt a school from state and local rules, regulations, policies, 

and procedures and from the provisions of this title according to the 

terms of the contract.” Id. Thus, under the plain terms of the 1993 

Charter Schools Act, charter schools were not required to comply 

with the provisions of Title 20, including the FDA. See id. See also 

Ga. L. 1993, pp. 1440, 1445 § 3 (“All laws and parts of laws in conflict 

with this Act are repealed.”).

The Charter Schools Act of 1998 repealed and replaced the 

1993 law. See Ga. L. 1998, pp. 1080, 1082, §§ 1, 3. Like the 1993 law, 

however, the 1998 law authorized individual public schools to 
18

convert into public charter schools governed by a “performance 

based [charter] contract approved by both state and local boards of 

education.” Ga. L. 1998, p. 1082, § 3. And like the 1993 law, the 1998 

Charter Schools Act waived the requirement that charter schools 

comply with Title 20’s requirements, providing that, “[e]xcept as 

provided in this article and in the charter, a charter school shall not 

be subject to the provisions of this title.” Ga. L. 1998, p. 1086, § 3

Although the language of the Charter Schools Act’s waiver 

provision was amended in 2002 and again in 2005, the Charter 

Schools Act continued to grant charter schools a waiver from Title 

20’s provisions, including the provisions of the FDA. See Ga. L. 2002, 

pp. 388, 391, § 1 (providing that the local and state boards could 

“waive, as sought by the petitioner, specifically identified state and 

local rules, regulations, policies, and procedures, and provisions of 

this title other than the provisions of this article”); Ga. L. 2005, pp. 

798, 808, § 12 (“Except as provided in this article or in a charter, a 

charter school shall not be subject to the provisions of this title 

. . . .”).
19

Then, in 2007, the General Assembly passed the Charter 

Systems Act, which amended the Charter Schools Act to provide 

that local public school systems could convert into public charter 

systems, meaning that charter conversion was available for entire 

systems of schools and was no longer limited to individual schools. 

See Ga. L. 2007, pp. 185, 188, § 5. The Charter Systems Act also 

amended the Charter Schools Act to clarify that the waiver of Title 

20 requirements applied not only to individual charter schools that 

had converted from public schools but also to each individual charter 

school within a school system that had converted into a charter 

school system. See Ga. L. 2007, p. 191, § 8 (“Except as provided in 

this article or in a charter, a charter school, or for charter systems, 

each school within the system, shall not be subject to the provisions 

of this title . . . . A waiver granted pursuant to this Code section for 

a charter system shall apply to each system charter school within 

the system.”); OCGA § 20-2-2065 (a) (same).

As this statutory history reveals, when the General Assembly 

first authorized the creation of charter schools with the enactment 
20

of the 1993 Charter Schools Act, it clarified that charter schools were 

exempt from Title 20’s requirements, including any requirements 

that might otherwise be imposed on public schools by the FDA.

Thus, even assuming that the FDA granted teachers who accepted 

a fourth consecutive school year contract from the same local board

unqualified rights to the employment protections specified in the 

FDA before the 1993 Act’s passage, that was no longer the case after

the 1993 Act’s passage. Cf. GeorgiaCarry.Org, Inc. v. Atlanta 

Botanical Garden, Inc., 306 Ga. 829, 835 (3) (834 SE2d 27) (2019)

(noting that a 2014 amendment to OCGA § 16-11-127 (c) “limited 

the [statutory] right to exclude the carrying of firearms to only those 

who own or lease ‘private property,’” although “that [statutory] right 

was not always thus limited”). Teachers who earned FDA rights by 

accepting a fourth consecutive school year contract from the same 

local board after the 1993 Charter Schools Act was enacted earned 

at most qualified rights—rights that were not enforceable against 

charter schools. And Georgia law has remained consistent on this 

point since 1993, preserving charter schools’ waiver from Title 20 
21

requirements in the Charter Schools Act of 1998, which repealed 

and replaced the 1993 law, as well as in all subsequent amendments 

to the Charter Schools Act of 1998, including the Charter Systems 

Act of 2007.5

(b) Plaintiffs argue that the Charter Schools Acts of 1993 and 

1998 are irrelevant to their Impairment Clause claims because it 

was the 2007 Charter Systems Act, not the 1993 or 1998 laws, that 

5 The FDA’s reference to a right to “continued employment” does not 

undermine the conclusion that the FDA has allowed teachers to earn only 

qualified rights since the enactment of the 1993 Charter Schools Act. By way 

of background, in 2000, the FDA was amended to state that “[a] person who 

first becomes a teacher on or after July 1, 2000, shall not acquire any rights 

under this Code section to continued employment with respect to any position 

as a teacher.” Ga. L. 2000, pp. 618, 720, § 72 (emphasis supplied). In 2003, 

however, this provision of the FDA was amended to provide that “[a] person 

who first became a teacher on or after July 1, 2000, shall acquire rights under 

this Code section and Code Section 20-2-941 to continued employment as a 

teacher.” Ga. L. 2003, p. 896, § 2 (emphasis supplied). This provision is now 

codified at OCGA § 20-2-942 (d) (“A person who first became a teacher on or 

after July 1, 2000, shall acquire rights under this Code section to continued 

employment as a teacher.”). As the language of these different versions of this 

statutory provision shows, any right to “continued employment” afforded by 

the FDA is at most a right to continued employment specified “under this Code 

section.” And determining what rights to continued employment a teacher 

earns “under this Code section” requires us to read the provisions of the FDA

in their statutory and historical context, as we have done above. Because the 

1993 Charter Schools Act qualified any rights teachers might have otherwise 

been able to earn under the FDA, as described above, any right to “continued 

employment” afforded by the FDA would be similarly qualified.
22

“authorized the stripping of Barnes’s FDA rights.” But although 

Plaintiffs assert that the Charter Systems Act of 2007 “operate[s]

differently” than the Charter Schools Acts, they fail to explain why 

the waiver provision of the 2007 law operates differently than its 

statutory predecessors, such that it further limits the already 

qualified FDA rights teachers have earned since the 1993 Charter 

Schools Act’s passage.

The only argument Plaintiffs raise that is specific to this point 

is that “a teacher earns [FDA] rights system-wide,” and a waiver of 

Title 20 requirements under the Charter Systems Act 

“extinguish[es]” FDA rights “as to all schools in the system,” 

whereas, after a teacher’s individual school converts into a charter 

school and obtains a Title 20 waiver under the Charter Schools Act,

the teacher could still enforce his or her FDA rights against noncharter schools within the teacher’s school system. This argument, 

however, rests on the erroneous assumption that the FDA affords 

teachers a right to work in a school district that includes at least one 

non-charter school, against which their earned FDA rights are 
23

enforceable. There is no support for that assumption. Indeed, 

Georgia law has permitted public school systems to be composed 

entirely of charter schools since 1993, as neither the 1993 Charter 

Schools Act nor the 1998 Charter Schools Act imposed any limits on 

the number of individual schools within a school district that could 

undergo charter-school conversion. See Ga. L. 1993, pp. 1440, 1442, 

§ 1 (“Any local school may petition the state board for charter school 

status . . . .”); Ga. L. 1998, pp. 1080, 1085 § 3 (addressing the 

conditions under which “[t]he state board may grant a charter to a 

charter petitioner,” none of which concerned the number of charter 

or non-charter schools in the school system). Thus, even assuming 

that teachers could have earned a right under the FDA to work in a 

district with at least one non-charter public school before the 

Charter Schools Act of 1993 was enacted, that right would have been 

“extinguished” by the 1993 Act, not the Charter Systems Act of 2007.

See Ga. L. 1993, pp. 1440, 1445 § 3 (“All laws and parts of laws in 

conflict with this Act are repealed.”).

Plaintiffs’ other arguments fail to explain why the Charter 
24

Systems Act’s waiver provision limits teachers’ earned FDA rights 

more than the Charter Schools Act’s waiver provision. For example, 

Plaintiffs highlight differences in how the charter-conversion 

process works under the Charter Schools Act and the Charter 

Systems Act, arguing that “the Charter Schools Act authorizes startup and conversion charter schools,” whereas “[t]he Charter Systems 

Act . . . authorizes public school systems to become ‘charter 

systems.’” (Emphasis in original.) They also argue that there are 

differences in how charter schools and charter systems are “operated 

and managed,” stating that a charter school authorized by the 

Charter Schools Act “is operated by a private non-profit corporation 

and is under the supervision and direction of that corporation’s 

board of directors,” whereas a charter system authorized by the 

Charter Systems Act “is a public school system that remains 

operated and managed by its elected board of education.” 

These arguments, however, do not show that the Charter 

Systems Act of 2007 changed the nature or operation of the statutory 

waiver previously granted by the Charter Schools Acts of 1993 and 
25

1998. As noted above, the Charter Systems Act was not a standalone 

piece of legislation, but rather an amendment to the Charter Schools 

Act of 1998. See Ga. L. 2007, p. 185 (noting that the Charter Systems 

Act was an act “[t]o amend Article 31 of Chapter 2 of Title 20 of the 

Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to charter schools”). 

And the Charter Systems Act did not modify the Charter Schools 

Act’s grant of a waiver to individual charter schools, amending the 

language of the waiver provision only to account for the new systemconversion procedure created by the Act and to clarify that 

individual charter schools would remain exempt from Title 20’s 

requirements regardless of how they became charter schools. 

Specifically, before the Charter Systems Act authorized the 

conversion of entire school systems into charter systems, the 

Charter Schools Act granted a waiver to individual charter schools, 

stating that “a charter school shall not be subject to the provisions 

of this title.” Ga. L. 2005, p. 808, § 12 (emphasis supplied). And the 

Charter Systems Act retained that waiver for individual charter 

schools, including those that obtained charter-school status through 
26

the new system-conversion procedure created by the Act, stating 

that “a charter school, or for charter systems, each school within the 

system, shall not be subject to the provisions of this title,” and that 

“[a] waiver granted pursuant to this Code section for a charter 

system shall apply to each system charter school within the system.” 

Ga. L. 2007, p. 191, § 8 (emphasis supplied). 

3. Because both the Charter Schools Act and the Charter 

Systems Act granted charter schools a waiver from Title 20’s 

requirements, and because the Charter Systems Act simply revised 

the language of the waiver provision to account for the existence of 

charter schools that had obtained their charter status through the 

new system-conversion procedure authorized by the Act, the 

Charter Systems Act did not materially change the nature or 

operation of the waiver. And because, as explained above, the 1993 

Charter Schools Act clarified that the FDA did not afford teachers 

who accepted a fourth consecutive school year contract from the 

same local board any rights to FDA protections that were 

enforceable against charter schools, the Charter Systems Act’s 
27

retention of an FDA exemption for charter schools did not impair 

any right afforded to teachers who earned FDA rights after the 

enactment of the 1993 Charter Schools Act.

The trial court therefore erred in denying State Defendants’ 

renewed motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, granting 

Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, and denying Local 

Defendants’ cross motion for summary judgment.

Judgment reversed. All the Justices concur, except Pinson, J., 

disqualified.