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The Greenberg Traurig law firm last week hosted an Atlanta legislative forum focusing on major bills that passed into law during the 2025 General Assembly session that ended on April 4th. A four-member panel— comprised of State Reps. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta and Chuck Martin, R-Alpharetta, and Sens. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming and Jason Esteves, D-Atlanta— fielded questions from this writer ranging from education and tort reform to banning biological males in female sports and speculation about a rare special General Assembly session.

Esteves, who recently announced he’s running for governor, advocates “a redo on public education — especially the way we fund public education. He talks about revising the 40-year-old school funding formula. “And something that was one of the most impactful things I’ve seen during the session,” he said, “is that we included funding for school systems that are teaching students who are living in poverty. It was about $15 million. It’s important because Georgia was one of six states that didn’t consider economic status when distributing money.”

Dolezal added that “40 percent of the budget now goes to education and this year we funded all capital projects in cash due to the good fiscal health of the state.”

The Republicans and Democrats clashed on the tort reform legislation that passed the legislature and was signed into law by the governor. Martin said he felt passage especially means jury shopping will be limited. Evans flatly declared that the law “doesn’t do anything.” Dolezal chimed in that “coming into the session Georgia was rated the No 1 judicial hell hole in the country. The governor and his team knew it was a problem. And so we addressed property liability and limited out-of-control jury awards.”

Regarding Senate Bill 1– the Riley Gaines Act– Dolezal was its sponsor and said its passage “checks the box of common sense. It says that males are not allowed to participate in female sports and would not be allowed in changing rooms of female athletes.” He explained it was a reaction to a Georgia Tech swimming event with swimmer Riley Gaines. Gaines and other girls testified before the legislature about not only having a biological male competitor but about what happened in the changing rooms. “Riley and the other girls were not informed than a man would be allowed in their changing room.”

Martin added that he voted for SB 1 because it is about “fairness in women’s sports and also privacy.”

Evans and Esteves didn’t support SB 1, with both noting there were already high school rules in place to ban males in female sports. They both said there were more important issues to deal with than SB 1. “It is a political bumper sticker but not good policy,” Evans said.

Evans surprised many in the audience by saying a special legislative session called by the governor might be needed. “We should all look for potentially a special session, perhaps in the fall, to deal with any shortfall issues that happen in our budget because of potential cuts in the federal government.”.

Fellow Democrat Esteves followed up by saying, “I’m deeply concerned that we will have to come back to session later this year and deal with all of the terrible decisions that are coming up out of Washington.”

Dolezal and Martin didn’t seem to have any appetite for a special session, although they didn’t directly respond to Evans and Esteves. They did say, though, that Georgia’s conservative budget and reserve fund makes the state better positioned to weather any uncertainty.

In another interesting exchange, Dolezal declared Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ surprise decision to adjourn the Senate three hours before the midnight deadline was one of the highlights of the session. “This was the only session where I walked out 100% confident in everything that I voted in, that I didn’t miss anything. Because what happens in those last three hours is just not good government,” he said.

Evans shot back that House of Representatives leaders were caught unaware by the Senate’s maneuver. “You’ve got to let us know you’re going to go home. We still had bills we were making minor tweaks with to make sure they were good law. And they didn’t make it over the finish line,” she said, adding: “Next time maybe we can talk to our neighbor a little better.”