The Southern Center for Human Rights and the Georgia First Amendment Foundation have weighed in on the side of the state judicial watchdog agency against a challenge to its ruling that judges, with rare exceptions, must keep their courtrooms open to the public.

Calling the state Judicial Qualifications Commission's 2013 opinion “a straightforward recitation of the long-established, fundamental law in Georgia,” lawyers for the Southern Center and First Amendment Foundation asked the state Supreme Court in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Thursday to reaffirm that “the closure of the Georgia courts should be strictly prohibited absent the rigorous showing required by law.”

Lawyers for the two organizations filed the brief in response to a petition from the Council of State Court Judges that asked the high court review JQC Opinion 239 on the grounds that it is “an overly expansive” reading of the law.