Lawmakers: Under women’s skirts should be private

Georgia lawmakers may have a new problem to tackle next year. It started three years ago at a Houston County Publix, when an employee pointed his cellphone up a woman’s skirt and started recording video.

The woman told police she was browsing for some coconut milk at the Perry Parkway grocery store when an employee, Brandon Lee Gary, got close to her and bent down like he was tying his shoe. She reported that when she moved away, he bent down near her again, and she saw a phone on his shoe pointing up her skirt.

It’s a misdeed now common enough that it has a name: “upskirting.” Gary, then 21 according to the police report, was later arrested, admitted to the filming, and was convicted of one count of criminal invasion of privacy.

But on July 15, Georgia’s Court of Appeals reversed Gary’s conviction. Six of the nine justices agreed that what he did wasn’t technically illegal.

It was “offensive,” and the shopper did suffer some kind of invasion of privacy, the majority opinion says. But Gary did not break the letter of criminal law.

Houston County District Attorney George Hartwig has asked the court to reconsider. He said a push to the Georgia Supreme Court is possible.

The court looked closely at the word “place” in the law defining where Georgians can expect to be free of surveillance. The majority agreed the law does not guarantee privacy underneath the clothes of people who are in public places. They left it up to state lawmakers to decide if people should expect privacy under their clothes.

The top-ranking legislator in the state House, Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, “respectfully disagrees” with the court’s majority opinion.

Ralston, an attorney, agrees with the dissenting opinion, which says the plain language of the law criminalizes secret upskirt photos.

“That said, everyone agrees that the conduct described in the case is both reprehensible and disturbing,” said Ralston’s spokesman, Kaleb McMichen.

“If the ruling is affirmed by the Georgia Supreme Court, Speaker Ralston fully expects that legislation will be introduced and considered to address this issue,” McMichen said.

The two Houston County lawmakers whose districts include the Publix where the incident occurred said they and their colleagues are already talking about what to do about high-tech peeping Toms when they meet in January.

“From conversations with House colleagues and the speaker’s office, I believe we will see a simple legislative fix to this loophole that will ensure privacy is protected,” said state Rep. Shaw Blackmon, R-Bonaire.

Across the hall, state senators are talking about a fix to guarantee privacy under clothes as well.

“I’ll be supportive of that,” said state Sen. Larry Walker III, R-Perry.

The state’s prosecutors will work on drafting a bill on upskirting and work with legislators for passage, said Chuck Spahos, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia.

So between now and January, legislators and others will keep an eye on Georgia’s courts but can also get ideas on how to phrase the laws from other states.

Massachusetts updated its laws in 2014 after a court there ruled that existing laws on secret photography didn’t apply to upskirt photos. Kansas and Missouri laws say pictures secretly snapped for the purpose of looking under clothes is illegal.

This story was originally published July 26, 2016 at 2:47 PM with the headline "Lawmakers: Under women’s skirts should be private."