Ginsburg filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Stephen Breyer, while Justice Clarence Thomas filed another dissenting opinion with which Samuel Alito joined and Breyer joined except for Part II-A and footnote 6. Majority opinion The Majority held that copyright protection does not extend to the annotations contained in Georgia's official annotated code. The route taken to hold this was the 'government edicts doctrine'. Like the 11th Circuit, they cited the SCOTUS decision in Banks v. Manchester (1888) and extend the same logic as they applied to legal binding and non-bind material created by judges, to non-binding, non-authoritative and explanatory legal materials created by a legislative body vested with the authority to make law. The Court adopted the following framework to apply the government edicts doctrine as follows: First, regarding the identity of the official that created the work, the Court held that the Commission, as the sole author of the work (since the annotations prepared by LexisNexis pursuant to the work-for-hire agreement), qualifies as a legislator. They held that the Commission functions as an arm for the Georgia Legislature and its work thus falls under the sphere of "legislative authority". In order to hold this they noted that the Commission was composed predominantly of legislators and received funding designated by the law for the legislative branch. Finally, it was the legislature itself that approved and merged the annotations with the statutory provisions and published the OCGA "by authority of the state". Second, regarding the nature of work, the Court held that the Commission creating the annotations is in the "discharge" of its legislative duties. Although the annotations are not enacted into law through bicameralism and presentment, the preparation of the annotations is under an act of "legislative authority". The fact that the commentary and case laws in the annotations are approved by the legislature shows that they deemed it to be relevant. The Court rejected the argument by the State of Georgia that the annotations are copyrightable by virtue of §101 of the US Copyright Statute since it specifically lists “annotations” among the kinds of works eligible for copyright protection. They ruled that this provision refers only to annotations that represent an original work of "authorship" and the Commission, serving in its official capacity, cannot serve as an author due to the government edicts doctrine. They clarified that §101 protects annotations in case they are prepared by a private party