Dozens of student athletes in Georgia girls’ sports joined state Rep. Phillip Singleton (center) to support his bill banning transgender participation on Feb. 4, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – A trio of bills aimed at separating Georgia school sports teams between children assigned male or female at birth have cropped up in the General Assembly, sparking backlash from LGBTQ advocates who view the measures as discriminatory toward transgender persons.
One measure by state Rep. Philip Singleton, R-Sharpsburg, has taken the brunt of the focus for its proposal to ban “biological boys” from playing on school sports teams with “biological girls,” as well as permit lawsuits against schools that defy splitting up different-gendered student athletes.
Another bill, by state Rep. Rick Jasperse, R-Jasper, would require similar school-sports separations as Singleton’s measure, likewise legally defining “gender” as “a person’s biological sex at birth” in state law.
It would also require a panel of three doctors to review information on a “student’s reproductive organs, genetic makeup and other medically relevant factors” if parents seek to waive having their kids comply with the male-female sports rules.
A third measure filed Thursday by state Sen. Marty Harbin, R-Tyrone, would also separate high school athletes based on gender, defined as “biological sex.” It would further require Georgia public colleges and universities to do the same by making “all determinations based on sex and not on gender.”
LGBTQ advocates have long challenged moves to conflate gender with sex, citing research that disputes equating a person’s sexual identity with their sex organs. They argue Singleton’s bill, the only one of the three to face a General Assembly hearing so far, could ostracize Georgia’s transgender students.
“We know from our country’s history that separate but equal is never equal,” said Heidi Miracle, parent of a transgender daughter and the community engagement director for the LGBTQ advocacy nonprofit PFLAG’s Woodstock chapter.
“Transgender youth need to fit in, to be accepted,” Miracle said at a recent hearing on Singleton’s bill. “To force them to be on a team with a gender identity that does not match their own and against their will would be devastating.”
Singleton, who introduced a similar measure last year, has dismissed criticism that his bill targets transgender youths in Georgia, arguing its intent is to promote fairness in female high-school sports while stressing that “biological differences at birth” give male athletes a competitive advantage.
“This bill is not about transgender athletes,” Singleton said. “This bill is about protecting girls’ sports. There’s noise that’s trying to detract from that…. We’re trying to prevent people from being hurt in Georgia.”
Opponents of Singleton’s bill have also warned it could prompt popular sporting events like the NCAA basketball tournament and socially conscious business groups to abandon Georgia, threatening economic damage similar to what North Carolina faced for passing a bill to restrict bathroom use according to gender in 2016.
“When LGBTQ people don’t feel welcome at work or in the community, they’re less likely to stay,” said Chris Lugo, executive director of OUT Georgia Business Alliance. “Employee turnover is a drag on our state economy and business competitiveness.”
Supporters have rallied behind Singleton’s measure, arguing male athletes have biological advantages over female athletes and should not be allowed to potentially create unfair playing fields. Harbin’s bill, likewise, is co-sponsored by more than half of the state Senate’s Republican members.
“This is an actual pro-women legislation,” Rep. Sheri Gilligan, R-Cumming, said about Singleton’s bill. “And there is nothing discriminatory about laws that protect equal opportunities for females and female athletes.”
Another measure, sponsored by Rep. Ginny Ehrhart, R-Marietta, would forbid Georgia doctors from performing sex-reassignment surgeries on anyone younger than 18, with felony charges resulting from ignoring the proposed ban.
The Georgia Republican-backed bills on sex and gender follow President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 order to boost federal protections against gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination, aiming to relieve kids from “worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room or school sports.”
Biden’s order was hailed by LGBTQ advocacy groups including the Human Rights Campaign, which said the protections “will have a real and practical impact on the day-to-day lives of the approximately 11 million LGBTQ adults and millions more LGBTQ youth in the United States.”
Other groups have panned Biden’s order, calling it a step too far that could harm female athletes. The nonprofit Independent Women’s Voice, which backs Singleton’s bill, said the order “jeopardizes the future of female sports and may even place girls and women in physical danger.”
Singleton’s bill and others also come as the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Equality Act on Thursday, which would bolster protections against gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination in jobs, housing and public areas like restaurants.
All six of Georgia’s Democratic U.S. House members voted in favor of the Equality Act. All eight Republicans voted against it. The measure now heads to the U.S. Senate.
Gov. Brian Kemp unveiled plans to vaccinate Georgia school teachers in a speech at the state Capitol on Feb. 25, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
Teachers, school staff and certain other vulnerable groups in Georgia will be eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine starting on March 8, Gov. Brian Kemp announced Thursday.
Vaccines will be available for pre-K and K-12 school teachers and staff, Kemp said. Georgia adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, as well as the parents of children who have complex medical conditions, will also be eligible on March 8.
Kemp traced his decision to expand vaccines to teachers on encouraging signs of increasing vaccine production from the Biden administration and the new Johnson & Johnson-brand vaccine that won high safety marks from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week.
“Today, we will be taking another step to protect the most vulnerable and get Georgia back to normal,” Kemp said at a news conference Thursday.
Professors and staff at Georgia colleges and universities will not be on the March 8 list of newly eligible vaccine recipients since they are “dealing with an older population” of adult students who have more options to avoid infection than teachers of younger students in grades pre-K through 12, Kemp said.
The governor stressed he wants all Georgia public schools to return for in-person classes before year’s end as teachers are vaccinated, saying online classes amid the COVID-19 pandemic have dampened students’ education progress for too long.
“Virtual schooling is leaving too many children behind and parents at their wits’ end,” Kemp said. “We must have students back in the classroom, five days a week.”
The upcoming vaccine expansion for teachers drew praise from State School Superintendent Richard Woods, who called it a critical step in returning Georgia kids to in-person schooling.
“This is an important step in ensuring all Georgia students have access to in-person instruction and ensuring the safety of students, staff and families,” Woods said. “It has been an incredibly challenging year for educators and families alike, but I believe we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Teachers and other soon-eligible groups will join health-care workers, nursing home residents and staff, first responders and Georgians ages 65 and older who have qualified for the vaccine for several weeks.
Kemp noted Georgia has doled out nearly 1.9 million vaccines so far, including to more than 800,000 people ages 65 and older who have received at least one of the needed two doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Newly eligible teachers and other Georgians clambering for the vaccine could still face headaches in scheduling appointments for their shots given the state’s limited allotment, Kemp said. Currently, state officials are receiving 198,000 doses a week from the federal government.
“We will continue to see more demand than supply,” Kemp said.
If all goes well with the March 8 rollout to teachers, Kemp said he will move to expand vaccine eligibility again in late March to additional groups that tend to be more vulnerable to contracting the virus.
Local school administrators will be largely left to their own to decide how teachers and staff should receive their shots, including whether to host vaccines on-campus at their schools, Kemp said.
State officials are also working with hospitals and health clinics to decide which parents with children who have complex medical conditions will receive the vaccine, said Georgia Public Health Commissioner Dr. Kathleen Toomey.
“We are doing that in conjunction with providers who care for those children,” Toomey said on Thursday.
Officials stressed Georgians should go ahead and pre-register now for a vaccine appointment on the state’s sign-up website, even if they are not yet eligible. The website, https://myvaccinegeorgia.com/, will automatically alert people once they’re eligible and will schedule an appointment.
Roughly 812,000 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Georgia as of Thursday afternoon, with nearly 185,000 more reported positive antigen tests indicating likely positive results. The virus has killed 14,989 Georgians.
A bill to tighten rules for allowing ex-offenders in Georgia to be released early from probation that should help thousands of people maintain jobs and housing passed out of the state Senate on Thursday.
Sponsored by Sen. Brian Strickland, R-McDonough, the bill would let first-time felons in Georgia sentenced to prison for 12 months or fewer seek early termination of their probation after they’ve been released, paid court fines and avoided another run-in with the law for two years.
The bill would allow well-behaving probationers to petition courts for early termination of their supervision terms after three years. Its aim is to cut down Georgia’s highest-in-the-country probation population, Strickland said.
“In Georgia, we should incentivize individuals who make mistakes, serve their time, pay their restitution and stay out of trouble,” Strickland said from the Senate floor.
“We should be helping Georgians who have earned a second chance in life to get a job, buy a house, start a family or accomplish anything else they dream of doing in this state without the stigma of probation hanging over their heads.”
The bill passed unanimously in the Senate and now heads to the state House of Representatives.
It follows legislation in 2017 under then-Gov. Nathan Deal aimed at easing rules on terminating probation early. Those changes have not worked as planned, with only a handful of the roughly 50,000 eligible probationers actually being granted early termination as of last year, advocates say.
Many Georgians on probation face lengthy supervision terms lasting at least a decade, limiting their ability to land jobs and maintain steady housing from landlords wary of their status as probationers, said Lisa McGahan, policy director for the nonprofit Georgia Justice Project.
“We know that for people to be successful, they have to have access to economic opportunity [and] they have to have access to employment,” McGahan told lawmakers at a state Senate Judiciary Committee last week. “When you’re serving a very long probation sentence, those two things are mutually exclusive.”
Strickland’s bill marks a priority on Republican state senators’ criminal justice reform agenda in the current legislative session, along with another measure by state Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, that would bar licensing boards from denying business licenses to most Georgians on probation.
Cosponsors of Strickland’s bill include Sens. John Kennedy, R-Macon; Bruce Thompson, R-White; Tonya Anderson, D-Lithonia; and Ben Watson, R-Savannah.
Lines were sparse outside the Cobb County Regional Library voter precinct through noon on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. (Photo by Beau Evans)
ATLANTA – A wide-ranging bill clamping down on absentee voting in Georgia that has split Republicans and Democrats moved in the state House of Representatives on Wednesday.
The roughly 60-page bill, sponsored by Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, contains more than two dozen proposals including a controversial change requiring voters seeking mail-in ballots to provide the number on their driver’s license or state identification card, or photocopies of other valid ID forms.
Fleming’s bill would also restrict ballot-casting on weekends during the three-week early-voting period, scrapping rules for polls to be open on Sundays and instead requiring counties to pick either one Saturday or one Sunday ahead of Election Day for the precincts to be open.
The bill passed the state House Special Committee on Election Integrity, which Fleming chairs, on a party-line vote Wednesday and now heads to the full House for approval.
Fleming’s bill has been panned by Georgia Democrats who call it a measure aimed at suppressing votes after the party’s historic 2020 election wins. Democrat Joe Biden carried Georgia in the Nov. 3 presidential race, and the party won both of the Peach State’s U.S. Senate seats.
Republicans are going all-in to change Georgia’s rules for voting by mail this legislative session, having filed bills in both chambers that would require at least a driver’s license number or other legally-accepted ID to request an absentee ballot – and in some cases, a printed copy of one’s valid ID as well.
The Georgia Senate passed a measure this week by Sen. Larry Walker, R-Perry, that would require absentee-ballot seekers to provide their driver’s license or state ID number, or if they don’t have those ID forms, then alternatively a copy of their passport, employee ID card, utility bill or bank statement.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mike Dugan, R-Carrollton, introduced a 25-page bill with nearly two dozen election-focused proposals, including a mandate for Georgia voters to obtain a witness signature and a photo ID copy in the envelopes for absentee ballots mailed back to county elections officials.
That bill, which all but three Republicans in the Senate are co-sponsoring the bill, entails the most dramatic changes for mailing votes in Georgia that stand the best changes of passing this year in the state legislature.
“Recently, many of our citizens have expressed a lack of faith and integrity in our current election systems,” read a statement from the Senate Republican Caucus. “We have heard these concerns voiced by many – and addressing these concerns has been at the forefront of our legislative efforts this year to promote the good of the state.”
Democratic leaders have blasted the GOP-brought bills, framing their opponents’ focus on election integrity as a smokescreen for wooing conservatives still loyal to former President Donald Trump, who unleashed popular – but fundamentally unproven – claims of voter fraud after losing Georgia’s presidential election in November to Biden by 11,779 votes.
“[The] Georgia GOP is hell-bent on suppressing the vote because they can’t win when Georgians vote,” said U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Atlanta, who chairs the Democratic Party of Georgia. “If they wanted to restore confidence in elections, they would work with Democrats to pass common-sense legislation, not help fuel the far-right’s false election fraud narratives.”
Some local Democratic leaders have also pointed out the costs county elections officials could incur by implementing the changes in Fleming’s bill, noting a recent report from the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab that estimates Georgia counties could be forced to spend around $57 million on the changes in the next election cycle.
“Counties should not be held responsible for dangerous unfunded mandates that do nothing to make elections ‘secure’ but instead limit access to democracy for Georgians statewide,” read a letter penned this week by local leaders in Albany, Columbus and Augusta.
Fleming’s bill passed out of his committee after four separate hearings in which several county elections officials testified about the financial impacts of the proposed changes, expressing support for some provision like tighter ID verification but opposing others such as requiring drop boxes for absentee ballots to be placed only inside polling places.
Fleming, who is heading up this year’s debate on election bills in the Republican-controlled House, has made clear he believes the proposed changes would only create challenges for about 3% of Georgia voters who lack driver’s licenses – while boosting security for millions more voters.
At the first hearing to consider his bill on Feb. 18, Fleming said his bill stemmed not only from Republican voter grievances in the 2020 elections, but also Democratic voter grievances in the 2018 election for Georgia governor when then-Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams lost to current Republican Gov. Brian Kemp amid a flurry of voter-suppression charges.
“The goal of the bill … is an attempt, to the extent that we can, to begin to remedy some of those [elections] problems … and try to bring the left and the right back to a position where they have confidence overall in our election system,” Fleming said.
State Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, talks about his bill to ban defunding police after a favorable House vote on Feb. 24, 2021. (Photo by Beau Evans)
A bill aimed at preventing Georgia city and county governments from making deep cuts in the budgets of their local police agencies passed in the Georgia House of Representatives on Wednesday.
Sponsored by state Rep. Houston Gaines, R-Athens, the bill would limit local governments from reducing funds for police by more than 5% over a 10-year span. It includes exemptions for smaller jurisdictions and for spending on equipment purchases.
The bill passed 101-69 nearly along party lines, with three Democrats voting in favor. It now heads to the state Senate.
Speaking from the House floor on Wednesday, Gaines called policies to reduce funding for police a “radical idea” that would put police officers in danger and slow response times for emergencies.
“This legislation sends a strong message that we support our law enforcement officers and we will never defund police here in Georgia,” Gaines said. “When we have local governments that are out of control and putting lives at risk, we have to step in.”
Gaines also highlighted recent failed attempts by some Athens and Atlanta elected officials to slice millions of dollars from their police budgets amid protests over police brutality and racial injustice that swept across Georgia and the country last summer.
Critics called the funding restrictions a power grab by the state over local governments and argued it would stall efforts to fund other areas like mental health, housing and education that aim to keep people from landing in jail.
“The efforts to transfer funding from police departments is about addressing the root causes we are desperate to address,” said state Rep. Bee Nguyen, D-Atlanta. “This bill would shut down the necessary discourse leaders are having with their communities.”
Opposition to the bill also came from the Georgia Municipal Association and the Association County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG), which represent city and county governments and argued police funding should be left to local officials.
Gaines’ bill comes after last summer’s protests following the high-profile killings of Black men by police officers, including the deaths of George Floyd in Minnesota and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta.
Property destruction and violence at some of those protests sparked a backlash from conservative leaders over a push by some progressive officials to curb police funding, dubbed “defund the police.” The subject took center stage as an issue for both political parties in the 2020 election cycle.
Several Republican state lawmakers traced the need for the bill directly to those protests, saying police funding decisions have been politicized as a result.
“It is as much an answer to the politicization of an issue that has been made over the past few years,” said Rep. Alan Powell, R-Hartwell. “There’s one place you don’t need to defund and that’s public safety.”
Democratic lawmakers dismissed that way of framing the bill, arguing its intent instead is to let state officials pry into local affairs and ignore calls for more community-oriented policing in predominantly minority neighborhoods.
“This bill does absolutely nothing to increase or protect public safety,” said Rep. Renitta Shannon, D-Decatur. “There are better ways for the money to be spent and let us figure that out in our communities.”
Georgia Republicans have brought legislation in recent weeks to ease probation hardships for released offenders. Democratic lawmakers are pushing broad changes to arrest tactics like no-knock warrants, use-of-force training and civilian oversight of officer-involved shooting reviews.
A separate measure moving in the House to overhaul Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law has drawn bipartisan support, marking the major criminal-justice reform bill most likely to pass this year.
That bill would repeal state law allowing private citizens to detain someone who commits a crime in their presence or during an escape attempt. It would also let owners and employees in businesses detain those believed to have committed a crime on their property, so long as they’re handed over to local authorities within an hour.
Gaines’ bill also joins a handful of other measures critics have slammed as state overreach into local decisions, including a bill to block locals from banning certain energy sources that passed out of the House on Monday.
