Gwinnett County District Attorney Patsy Austin-Gatson has filed a lawsuit against Georgia House Bill 369, the state law that strips partisan primaries from a slate of local elected offices in five metro Atlanta counties. Austin-Gatson held a press conference to announce her legal challenge, adding her name to a growing list of metro Atlanta prosecutors pushing back against the measure before it can reshape how their offices are chosen at the ballot box.
The law, as reported by FOX 5 Atlanta, removes partisan primaries for district attorneys, county commissioners, school boards, tax commissioners, court clerks, solicitor-generals, and county surveyors, while explicitly leaving county sheriffs untouched. Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB 369 into law on May 12, 2026, after it cleared the state Senate 32-21 in late March and the House 93-64 two days later, with an effective date set for January 1, 2028, according to Ballotpedia News.
What makes the law unusual is its narrow reach. HB 369 applies only to Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties, using a statutory criterion that targets counties which abolished the elected office of county coroner in favor of a medical examiner system, per the same outlet’s reporting on the bill’s structure. Those five counties happen to contain Georgia’s largest concentrations of Black voters and are each currently led by Black Democratic women serving as their elected district attorneys, a demographic pattern that has fueled accusations the law was drawn with a specific political target in mind, according to WABE.
A Legal Fight Already Underway Before Gwinnett Joined
Austin-Gatson’s filing follows an earlier lawsuit brought on June 3, 2026, when DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston filed the initial state challenge to HB 369 in Fulton County Superior Court. Boston was joined at a Capitol press conference that day by fellow metro Atlanta district attorneys Fani Willis, Sonay Allen, and Tasha Mosley, WABE reported at the time. The legal arguments against the law center on Georgia’s Uniformity Clause, which prohibits special laws targeting specific counties, along with equal protection guarantees under the U.S. and Georgia constitutions and Georgia’s Rejected Bills Clause, according to Democracy Docket’s case tracking…