(The Center Square) — A Georgia House study committee will take another look at legalizing gaming.
Lawmakers have batted around the idea for several years. Republicans asked on the May 2024 primary ballot if voters would support a referendum letting the voters decide whether or not to legalize gaming and more than 81% said “yes.”
Rep. Marcus Wiedower, R-Watkinsville, introduced a measure during this year’s session of the General Assembly that would have put legalized sports betting before voters in November 2026 but it never made it off the House floor. The bill would not have approved casinos or other brick-and-mortar gambling.
The resolution had steep opposition, including the Georgia Baptist Mission Board and the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition.
“Study after study shows the numerous problematic outcomes of this–reduced on the job productivity, bankruptcy, divorce, suicide attempts, you know the list,” Mack Parnell, executive director of the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition, told the House Higher Education Committee during the session. “In the legislation, there’s mitigation efforts, which leads me to wonder that if in the legislation where you are legalizing something, you to have mitigation efforts, why would you be endorsing that.”
Sports betting is legal in 39 states and the District of Columbia, according to the American Gaming Association. Tennessee and Florida allow sports betting.
Wiedower will chair the study committee that will explore how gaming would contribute to the economy and workforce when weighed “against what social and societal ills may come to Georgia if gaming is approved by the citizens of this state,” according to House Speaker Jon Burns.
The committee on gaming is one of 16 study committees approved by Burns. Rep. Tim Fleming, R-Covington, will chair the Blue Ribbon Committee on Election Procedure which will study Georgia’s election laws and boards. The Peach State has been at the center of election controversy since the 2020 election which former President Joe Biden won in Georgia.
Biden’s Georgia win was one of the key arguments used by President Donald Trump and his supporters to claim the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Trump and several others are facing charges in Fulton County over allegations they tried to interfere with the election.
