Opinion ID: 2509859
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Absence of Charter Schools in 1983

Text: The local systems also contend that because no charter schools existed in 1983, commission charter schools cannot possibly come within the meaning of special schools as used in the 1983 Constitution. This contention was pressed by the local systems in their initial briefs, although they backed away from it in the briefs they submitted after oral argument and the majority does not give it any credence. That is because it is baseless. The application of the words used in a Constitution is not restricted to things and circumstances that existed at the time it was ratified. Otherwise, to give just a couple of the more obvious examples, the First Amendment to the United States Constitution would not apply to speech communicated electronically or digitally or to Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, none of which yet existed as religions in 1791, when the Bill of Rights took effect. Thus, this Court has explained that a constitutional attack on a statute will fail `if upon analysis it appears that the only novelty in the legislation is that approved principles are applied to new conditions.' Williamson v. Housing Auth. of Augusta, 186 Ga. 673, 693, 199 S.E. 43 (1938) (citation omitted). The proper standard for applying old constitutional words to new circumstances was set forth in Collins v. Mills, 198 Ga. 18, 30 S.E.2d 866 (1944), in considering whether lumber qualified as a farm product as that phrase was used in a 1912 constitutional amendment: A provision of the constitution is to be construed in the sense in which it was understood by the framers and the people at the time of its adoption. Accordingly, the amendment of 1912 means now precisely what it meant at that time. The business of farming, however, may change both as to method and as to things produced, and changes in the latter respect may from time to time add new crops to the catalogue of farm products. In such case, the exemption would apply to the new products, as well as to the old, and would do so, even though the new products may have been entirely unknown, and hence not specifically within the minds of the people at the time such constitutional provision was adopted. This would involve only an application of the same constitution to new conditions arising by natural processes, and would not mean that the constitution itself had been changed. Id. at 22, 30 S.E.2d 866. The question, therefore, is not whether the people of Georgia who framed and ratified the 1983 Constitution contemplated the existence of charter schools, but rather whether schools that are created by the General Assembly outside the local school systems through individual charters, and that differ from local schools in numerous ways, could come within the meaning of special schools as citizens in 1983 understood that termstarting with the ordinary meaning of the words used.