Subcommittee approves bill to restrict limits on photographing children

As written, and amended, this bill still infringes on constitutional rights. The bill is not narrowly focused.

2-16-2011 Georgia:

ATLANTA -- A subcommittee gave its approval Tuesday to a bill that would allow people to take photographs of children without a parent’s permission as long as they’re not on the state’s sex-offender registry.

The bill is designed to correct an oversight in last year’s sweeping sex-offender law that made it a crime for anyone other than the parents to photograph a child, even a grandparent or someone who captured the image of a child in the background.

However, the Georgia Parent Teacher Association testified against the bill and vows to try continue trying to stop it.

The subcommittee of the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee voted unanimously to pass to the full committee House Bill 162 sponsored by Rep. Ann Purcell, R-Rincon.

“My 15-year-old grandchild could not have taken a picture of her friend,” Purcell said.

The law passed last year, sponsored by House Speaker David Ralston and then-House Majority Leader Jerry Keen, made it a misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature for anyone taking a child’s photo without permission.

Purcell said she was contacted by a prosecutor and others from her coastal district asking that the law be changed because they feared it was so broadly worded that it would be ruled unconstitutional in a court challenge. That challenge might let an actual predatory of children off the hook.

“It was an oversight,” she said.

Ralston, an attorney, recognized the need for the change and approved her bill, she said.

The PTA, though, likes the law as it is.

“We want to ensure that in the bill it protects parental rights and the protection of the children,” said Otha Thornton, the PTA’s legislative chairman. “We want to take the protection a little bit further.”

He said there have been instances in metro Atlanta of people selling photos they took of children without permission and others who doctored children’s images and posted them publicly. He intends to ask the full committee to amend the bill when it comes for consideration ..Source.. Walter C. Jones