by Ty Tagami | Apr 28, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Transgender students born male can no longer participate on female teams in Georgia’s schools and colleges now that Gov. Brian Kemp has signed a ban passed by the General Assembly.
On Monday, Kemp inked his signature on seven bills, including the Riley Gaines Act of 2025. It is named after a Kentucky college swimmer who lost to a transgender competitor at an NCAA competition held at Georgia Tech three years ago.
“This commonsense legislation is about what is fair and safe for our children,” Kemp said.
House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington, said the issue is not partisan. Rather, he said, “it’s about right and wrong.”
The House of Representatives backed a similar bill, but Senate Bill 1 emerged as the final version. Burns and the top Republican on the Senate side, Lieutenant Gov. Burt Jones, made it a top priority. Jones, a potential candidate for governor, did not attend the bill signing ceremony, but said in a written statement that Georgia lawmakers had kept a promise to female athletes, “Just like President Trump is delivering on promises made in D.C.”
In early February, Trump signed an executive order affecting schools and transgender athletes. His “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” order withholds federal funding from schools that do not “oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports … as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.”
Critics contend Georgia’s Senate and House measures were overkill, a massive effort against rare instances of transgender participation in sports. But proponents, including Frontline Policy Action, a fundamentalist Christian advocacy group that helped draft them, argued that allowing transgender students born male to compete against females was both unfair and dangerous, given the variance in physical strength.
Despite hours of testimony, no evidence was presented of instances in Georgia’s elementary or high schools where a significant problem was caused by transgender participation. Critics noted that lawmakers named their legislation after a college athlete from another state.
Georgia now joins more than two dozen states with a similar prohibition.
The law applies to any competitions that involve public schools and colleges and includes participating private schools and colleges. It allows the state to financially punish institutions that willfully fail to comply, including withholding direct funding as well as funds for scholarships, loans and grants. It also allows lawsuits and monetary damages against such institutions.
The law also prohibits transgender athletes born female from participating on male teams, though there was no significant testimony about problems caused by their participation in sport.
Kemp also signed House Bill 268, a sweeping school safety measure that requires that routinely updated digital campus maps be shared with first responders, that schools equip staff with mobile panic alerts and that student records be transferred within five business days of a student’s change of schools. It would also allow children ages 13-17 accused of committing a terroristic act on campus to be tried as an adult, with potential prison time and convictions that would go on their records for life.
Kemp also signed House Bill 81, to enter an interstate compact on licensing school psychologists; House Bill 235, to give school staff time off to donate organs; House Bill 307, for screeners and support plans for students with dyslexia; Senate Bill 82, to encourage school districts to authorize charter schools, and Senate Bill 123, to address chronic absenteeism.
by Dave Williams | Mar 31, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Controversial legislation banning transgender student athletes from participating in female sports in Georgia cleared the Republican-controlled General Assembly Monday.
Senate Bill 1, which the Senate’s GOP majority passed early last month, passed the House 100-64 virtually along party lines early Monday afternoon. The Senate then gave the bill final passage several hours later, voting 34-20 also along party lines to approve several changes the House had made to the measure.
The legislation prohibits Georgia public school and college students from competing on teams that do not match the sex on their birth certificates. It also applies to private institutions that compete against public schools and colleges.
Noncompliant public schools would risk loss of state funding and exposure to lawsuits.
During Monday’s House floor debate, Republican supporters said transgender students born male enjoy an unfair competitive advantage over women in sports to the point of threatening female athletes’ safety.
“It is a narrowly tailored commonsense bill that eliminates the potential for male advantage,” said Rep. Josh Bonner, R-Fayetteville, who carried the Senate legislation in the House. “Allowing that advantage on the field puts females at risk.”
Democrats countered that the bill targets transgender students, already a vulnerable group of young people studies have shown are particularly susceptible to mental health problems.
“This bill does not make our children safer,” said Rep. Jasmine Clark, D-Lilburn. “It’s a license to harass, bully, and harm.”
Other opponents said the bill isn’t necessary because no transgender males are currently competing in women’s sports in Georgia. House Democrats accused their Republican colleagues of seeking to score political gains at the expense of a tiny minority of Georgians.
“This is not about fairness. This is not about safety. This is about politics,” said Rep. Karla Drenner, D-Avondale Estates. “It’s a manufactured crisis designed not to solve a real problem but to create division and fear.”
But Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, chairman of the House Education Committee, said the bill’s purpose is to promote “fairness, safety, and integrity” in school and college sports.
“This legislation does not target individuals,” he said. “It targets inequity.”
After the votes, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones – who presides over the Senate – called the bill a “historic step toward achieving a critical goal” for the 2025 legislative session.
“Since I took office in 2023 as lieutenant governor, the Senate has led the way to make protections for females competing in athletics on any level a reality,” Jones said.
“Today, the General Assembly sent a clear message – biological men are not welcome in girls’ sports or spaces here in Georgia,” added House Speaker Jon Burns, R-Newington. “The House was proud to support this measure, which builds on prior protections championed by the House.”
The bill now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for his signature.
by Ty Tagami | Mar 25, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Transgender student athletes would be banned from female sports under two bills in the Georgia legislature, and the version from the state Senate has taken the lead.
A committee of the Georgia House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 1 Tuesday after it was amended to mirror some elements of the version from the House of Representatives, which awaits a Senate hearing.
Both measures passed their own chambers largely along party lines.
The Senate version now carries the same title as House Bill 267, which was named after Riley Gaines. She became a flag bearer for the movement to ban transgender athletes born male from female sports after she lost a swimming championship to a transgender athlete in 2022.
SB 1 was not amended to copy HB 267 in one very big way though: the House bill would alter most of Georgia law to read “sex” where the word “gender” is used. SB 1 would only do that in relation to school and college sports.
Proponents, including Christian groups, say a ban is needed to protect female athletes against physically stronger competitors despite testimony that very few transgender athletes exist and that transgender people are not always larger and stronger.
“We are creating a boundary around female sport,” Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, the chief sponsor of SB 1, said Tuesday. The House Education Committee then passed his bill on to the House Rules Committee, paving the way for a vote by the full House. There was significant committee opposition to passage, but it was a voice vote without a public tally.
Rep. Josh Bonner, R-Fayetteville, the chief sponsor of HB 267, signaled House collaboration with the Senate when he called the new version of SB 1 a “commonsense compromise.”
Before the vote, the committee took public testimony that was consistent with what lawmakers have heard previously. A lawyer for Frontline Policy Action, a Christian advocacy group, testified that her organization helped write both the House and Senate versions of the legislation and supported SB 1, as did a representative of the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition.
Critics testified that if SB 1 were to become law, females who look male could get accused of being transgender and become subject to bullying. The legislation empowers parents to make accusations and to sue schools and colleges — both public and private — that they believe have violated the transgender prohibition.
Opponents also said elementary school children would be affected despite the focus on adults like Gaines.
Transgender people are an exceptionally small demographic. The Williams Institute at the UCLA law school estimates there are 1.6 million transgender people ages 13 and older in the United States, including nearly 22,000 in Georgia, of whom 3,400 are minors.
“With so many Georgians struggling for things like just trying to get by and pay the bills, I really wonder why we’re focused on this,” said Rev. Kimble Sorrells, a United Church of Christ minister. “It feels like this is really just political grandstanding.”
by Ty Tagami | Feb 27, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
The Georgia House of Representatives on Thursday adopted its own version of legislation that would limit transgender student competition in school sports, making the final passage of a law on the topic more likely after a similar bill passed the Senate earlier this month.
House Bill 267 was approved 102-54, with a couple of Democrats crossing party lines to vote with Republicans for passage. It would open schools and colleges to lawsuits for allowing transgender athletes born male to compete against girls and women.
The measure, like Senate Bill 1, which the Senate adopted in a near party-line vote the first week of February, would also prohibit transgender students born male from using locker rooms designated for females.
House Republicans called HB 276 a “common sense” measure that protects girls from more powerful transgender athletes and reinforces a binary division of the sexes.
Democrats excoriated Republicans for a “weird” obsession with a group of people who comprise a tiny fraction of the population, attributing their motive to “hate” and to pandering to conservative Christian voters.
The legislation addresses more than sports: it would replace the word “gender” with the word “sex” throughout most of Georgia’s law books.
Democrats asserted this would “erase” transgender people, removing legal protections.
“It is a calculated, dangerous, deeply discriminatory piece of legislation that goes far beyond the realm of athletics,” said Rep. Karla Drenner, D-Avondale Estates. “Let’s call this the Erasure of Transgender Georgians Act.”
Drenner called the concerns raised about transgender athletes in sport a “manufactured crisis by the most extreme factions of the Republican Party.”
Republicans said they had addressed concerns about hate crimes against transgender people with an amendment that kept the term “gender” in that part of the law.
GOP lawmakers responded to the accusation of playing politics by saying transgender athletes are a real threat to girls and women.
Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-Powder Springs, reacted in kind to the allegation that her party was obsessed with a non-issue by saying it was “weird” that collegiate swimming champion Riley Gaines was defeated by a transgender athlete at an NCAA competition at Georgia Tech in 2022.
HB 267 is named the Riley Gaines Act because of that much-publicized incident.
“We’re just trying to keep biological males from slide tackling our daughters on the soccer field,” Ehrhart said.
Rep. Chris Erwin, R-Homer, a former school superintendent and the chairman of the House Education Committee, called it a “measured, reasonable and necessary response to growing concerns.”
Gaines testified for HB 267 at a hearing in Erwin’s committee last week. She said via Zoom that she’d learned from other women about transgender athletes dominating their competitions, too, but she didn’t go into detail.
Democrats on Thursday countered that if transgender athletes were a significant problem for female sports, Republicans wouldn’t have had to name their bill after an out-of-state athlete.
Gaines swam for the University of Kentucky.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 21, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
Transgender people, particularly youths, remain a subject of Republican-led policy in Georgia, as lawmakers consider several bills that would regulate their interactions with the medical industry and with female athletes.
Both the Georgia Senate and House of Representatives have measures that would ban transgender students born male from female teams in K-12 schools and in higher education.
The Senate has gone further, with legislation that would ban puberty blockers and the use of state resources — health insurance, hospital facilities and medical personnel — for gender-related procedures.
The conflict has made for confusing hearings, where experts disagreed about core facts.
For instance, one doctor testified at a recent hearing on Senate Bill 30 that substances known as puberty blockers have long-term consequences, and that children should not be deciding whether to take them.
“They’re not capable of making life-altering decisions,” she said. “We don’t leave them alone for the weekend.”
Another doctor contradicted her, saying puberty blockers are reversible. He described the legislation as government overreach. The committee passed SB 30 that evening.
Senate Bill 39, the bill that would ban the use of state resources for gender-change procedures, and Senate Bill 1, which seeks to ban transgender athletes from female athletics, have already passed the full Senate.
The sports measure may get the most traction in the House, which is moving its own legislation on transgender athletes.
House Bill 267 passed the House Education Committee on Friday. Like SB 1, it seeks to ban transgender students born male from participation on female teams — and from using female locker rooms and other shared facilities where nudity occurs.
HB 267 is named the “Riley Gaines Act.” Gaines is a collegiate swimmer whose encounter with a transgender athlete at a 2022 national championship meet at Georgia Tech has been widely reported.
Like other women who’ve testified at recent hearings about that event, Gaines was outraged about having to compete against — and share a locker room with — a transgender woman whom Gaines said was unlike a woman due to “fully intact” male genitalia.
“I am very proud and really honored to lend my name to the fight to reclaim the English language and, of course, to save women’s sports,” Gaines said at the committee hearing on HB 267 Friday.
She introduced herself as a 12-time NCAA All American, a five-time Southeastern Conference (SEC) champion, an SEC record holder in the 200-meter butterfly, a two-time Olympic trial qualifier, and “one of the fastest Americans of all time.”
Yet, she said, she could not beat a transgender athlete at that 2022 event who had previously performed poorly against male swimmers.
Democrats have mostly opposed these measures, asserting that they are not grounded in fact or science.
They dismiss arguments that the sports legislation is intended to promote fairness for girls, countering with their own measures that demand equity in “funds, facilities access, equipment, supplies, and other resources.” Senate Bill 41 and House Bill 221 have yet to get a hearing.
For Rep. Karen Lupton, D-Chamblee, the role of religion is a concern. Frontline Policy Action, a Christian group, helped write HB 267, and she saw hypocrisy in that.
“Did Jesus say that the highest expression of faith is to love a neighbor?” Lupton asked at Friday’s hearing, suggesting that HB 267 was not “loving trans kids as you would wish to be treated.”
Frontline Policy Action also helped write SB 1, the Senate’s version of HB 267. And a representative of that group, along with one from the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, have been a consistent presence at these hearings.
The transgender sports issue has proved a popular one for Republicans, who suggest alarming scenarios where these athletes could overpower and even injure females.
The GOP pushed through a bill in 2022 that allowed the Georgia High School Association to ban transgender athletes from teams that don’t match their birth certificates.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in early February that withholds federal funding from schools that do not “oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports.” And the GOP-led U.S. House narrowly passed its own bill with the same goal in January.
Critics contend that Republicans are capitalizing on a handful of well-publicized events, such as the one involving Gaines. They say such high-stakes competitive scenarios are rare, with injury rarer still.
“Why do we keep hearing about Riley Gaines every time we have one of these hearings?” complained one woman at a subcommittee hearing on HB 267.
Critics also say that the GOP initiatives against transgender people will expose an already marginalized group to more bullying, raising their risk of suicide, which is already relatively high.
Republican lawmakers acknowledge they have no data to describe the scope of transgender participation in sports in Georgia, but they and their supporters counter that just one occurrence is too many.
The conflict around the medical regulation of gender may be the most emotional.
Transgender people and parents of transgender children say they are being targeted like gay people were decades ago.
Peter Isbister, an Atlanta-area dad, said at a hearing earlier this month on SB 30 that such measures can’t turn back history. He also implied that they would mainly affect those from lower-income households. He said he can take his child out of state to obtain puberty blockers or other gender-affirming care if necessary.
“My 11-year-old son will get the health care he needs, I am privileged to say, because I will go to the ends of the earth to make sure that he does,” Isbister said. “Why? Because I love him as you love your children, because our love is not different than your love.”
The full Senate has yet to consider SB 30, the bill Isbister was testifying against. But that chamber has already sent SB 39 and SB 1, the sports bill, to the House.
SB 1 may get the most support there, since the House’s version, HB 267, could soon get a vote before the full House.
In a rare appearance that was clearly intended to send a message of support for the bill, House Speaker Jon Burns spoke at Friday’s hearing on the House bill.
The Republican from Newington said he was concerned about transgender participation in sport because he has four granddaughters.
“It’s simple,” he said. “Biological men have an undeniable and scientifically proven advantage against women when it comes to athletic competition.”
Burns said the legislation “levels the playing field and ensures that our daughters and our granddaughters are not robbed of their opportunity for fair and safe competition.”
