Georgia: The Bond Issue

In a split decision, a three-man fed eral court in Atlanta last week upheld the right of Georgia’s legislators to refuse to seat Julian Bond, 26, a Negro civil rights worker who had publicly expressed admiration for the courage of draft-card burners and urged Americans to boycott the war in Viet Nam (TIME, Jan. 21). In the court’s view, the Georgia house of representatives was justified in construing Bond’s public statements as a denial of his lawmaker’s oath to support the U.S. and state constitutions.

The dissenting opinion was written by Chief Judge Elbert P. Tuttle, an Eisenhower appointee, who argued that the Georgia legislators had gone beyond their own constitution in barring Bond —without even considering the “grave” question of whether they had violated the guarantee of free speech. Judge Tuttle noted that the Georgia charter listed very specific qualifications for a lawmaker (age, residence, absence of a criminal record). To allow the legis lature to judge a duly elected member by “undefined, unknown and even constitutionally questionable standards,” he said, “shocks not only the judicial, but also the lay sense of justice.”

But the majority decision, by Kennedy Appointees Griffin Bell and Lewis Morgan, held that Tuttle’s dissent was too restrictive on the lawmakers, since there is nothing in the Georgia constitution to compel the house to seat a member “if a reasonable basis . . . exists for the denial.” Bond’s endorsement of the strident antiwar policy of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, said the two judges, is such a reasonable basis.