GOP lawmaker expelled from Georgia’s House chamber after refusing to take Covid test

‘I don’t know about y’all but I’ve been to too many funerals,’ says House speaker David Ralston

A Republican state lawmaker in was escorted out of the House chamber in Atlanta by a Georgia state trooper - after he refused to take a Covid-19 test.

David Clark violated the chamber’s twice-a-week coronavirus testing policy, according to The Washington Post.

The House speaker, Republican representative David Ralston, ordered him to leave on Tuesday for “jeopardizing the health of our members in this chamber.”

After Mr Clark refused, Mr Ralston ordered a state trooper to remove him.

“I don’t know about y’all but I’ve been to too many funerals — and I’m tired of going to them,” Mr Ralston said after ordering Mr Clark’s removal. His comments prompted applause from representatives in the chamber, according to the Post.

Georgia lawmakers are required to be tested for coronavirus twice a week at a designated site in the Capitol while the House is in session.

The incident was the latest disagreement between Republican representatives in Georgia, who have been torn over former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election results.

Mr Clark, alongside other representatives, supported a Texas lawsuit that attempted to overturn the results in four states, including Georgia, while Mr Ralston publicly resisted Mr Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud in the presidential election.

In a Twitter thread following his removal from the chamber on Tuesday, Mr Clark, who represents a district northeast of Atlanta, said that he will continue to refuse taking a Covid-19 test.

What I will not do is be forced to have a Covid test, or any unnecessary medical test, done without a basis for doing so. The seat that I hold for District 98 is not my seat, but the people’s seat,” Mr Clark wrote on Tuesday.

He added: “I work for you, and I cannot in good conscience watch expensive tests that should be given to Georgia citizens who desperately need them be wasted for nothing more than political optics at the Capitol.”

In an interview with The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr Clark denied that he did not appreciate the importance of the pandemic, but said he felt that the testing policy for lawmakers was excessive while other coronavirus precautions, such as face masks, were being used.

After he ordered Mr Clark’s expulsion, the House speaker asked representatives in the chamber if they wanted to get rid of the testing policy, with the room responding “No”.

Mr Ralston then told the representatives that he hopes the pandemic ends soon, but said that until it does they need to continue taking precautions.

“I don’t know when this will end,” Mr Ralston said. “But until that time, I think it behooves us to do whatever we need to do to be safe and to show love toward our neighbors rather than go out there and get media attention or standing up to authority.”

Since the start of the pandemic, Georgia has recorded more than 862,000 coronavirus cases and at least 13,222 deaths.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there are now more than 25.5 million people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in the US. The death toll has reached 429,214.