Page:Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org SCOTUS slip opinion.pdf/8

Rh The Eleventh Circuit reversed. 906 F. 3d 1229. The Court began by reviewing the three 19th-century cases in which we articulated the government edicts doctrine. See Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Pet. 591 (1834); Banks v. Manchester, 128 U. S. 244 (1888); Callaghan v. Myers, 128 U. S. 617 (1888). The Court understood those cases to establish a “rule” based on an interpretation of the statutory term “author” that “works created by courts in the performance of their official duties did not belong to the judges” but instead fell “in the public domain.” 906 F. 3d, at 1239. In the Court’s view, that rule “derive[s] from first principles about the nature of law in our democracy.” Ibid. In a democracy, the Court reasoned, “the People” are “the constructive authors” of the law, and judges and legislators are merely “draftsmen … exercising delegated authority.” Ibid. The Court therefore deemed the “ultimate inquiry” to be whether a work is “attributable to the constructive authorship of the People.” Id., at 1242. The Court identified three factors to guide that inquiry: “the identity of the public official who created the work; the nature of the work; and the process by which the work was produced.” Id., at 1254. The Court found that each of those factors cut in favor of treating the OCGA annotations as government edicts authored by the People. It therefore rejected the Commission’s assertion of copyright, vacated the injunction against PRO, and directed that judgment be entered for PRO.

We granted certiorari. 588 U. S. ___ (2019).

We hold that the annotations in Georgia’s Official Code are ineligible for copyright protection, though for reasons distinct from those relied on by the Court of Appeals. A careful examination of our government edicts precedents reveals a straightforward rule based on the identity of the author. Under the government edicts doctrine, judges—and, we now confirm, legislators—may not be considered