As this blog has noted, there is some concern over the validity of a new Georgia law implementing a state constitutional amendment authorizing non-competition agreements and other restrictive covenants. The issue is that the law implementing the constitutional change carried an effective date of November 3, 2010, before the effective date of the constitutional amendment, i.e., January 1, 2011.
Representative Wendell Willard of the Georgia House of Representatives, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and Vice Chair of the House Rules Committee, has introduced Georgia House Bill 30. That Bill, if enacted, would reenact all of the substantive portions of the implementation law whose effective date is in question. The stated goal of the legislation is to “remove any uncertainty” regarding the validity of the implementation law. The Bill explicitly states, however, that the legislature takes no position on whether the earlier law is in fact invalid.
As of the writing of this post, the legislature had not acted on Representative Willard’s Bill, nor had it been assigned to a committee for review. The legislature was to open for business today, January 10, 2011, despite today’s rare southern snow storm.