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.”
by Ty Tagami | Feb 11, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Georgia Senate passed legislation Tuesday that would prohibit state health insurance plans from paying for medical care related to changing gender.
Senate Bill 39 was adopted by Republicans on a 33-19 party-line vote.
The measure comes after a similar vote last week when the Senate passed a proposed ban on participation of transgender athletes in school sports.
Transgender people aren’t doing anything to anyone, said Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta.
“This is just mean-spirited legislation,” he said. “This is wrong.”
Fellow Democrats contended the bill would harm the economy by causing workers to leave the state and that it would violate the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Sen. Nikki Merrit, D-Grayson, said Republicans will use the bill to distract their constituents from issues that affect them daily, such as the price of eggs. She called it a “cheap political stunt.”
However, the chief sponsor of SB 39, Sen. Blake Tillery, R-Vidalia, said he was confident the legislation was what most Georgians wanted.
“What it says is we’re not going to spend state taxpayer dollars on these surgeries,” Tillery said.
The legislation would prohibit the use of state health benefits coverage for “gender-affirming care.” It would also ban state-owned health-care facilities and physicians who work for the state from providing such care.
The legislation defines such care to include hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery.
Republicans voted down an amendment offered by Democrats that would have carved out an exception for mental health care related to gender identity. Tillery said the underlying legislation would clearly allow such services, but Democrats insisted the language was unclear.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 6, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – The Republican-controlled Georgia Senate moved to purge transgender athletes from female teams Thursday in a near party-line vote.
Senate Bill 1 would prohibit public school and state college students from competing on teams that do not match the sex on their birth certificates. Private institutions that compete against them would be affected, too.
Noncompliant public schools would risk loss of state funding and exposure to lawsuits.
Public schools are already facing financial consequences at the federal level.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order banning 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.”
The U.S. House of Representatives narrowly passed its own bill with the same goal last month. The U.S. Senate has yet to consider it.
On Thursday, Republican state senators said a state-level law is needed because of “male advantage” in sport.
“Without a boundary around female sport that excludes male advantage, males would dominate every major sporting competition,” said Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, the chief sponsor of SB 1.
Sen. Brandon Beach, R-Alpharetta, said it was “common sense” that males and females should not compete on the playing field.
Democrats argued that Republicans are exploiting the issue from a “cynical, strategic” standpoint.
They said transgender people comprise a tiny fraction of the population and are not a real threat to female athletes, especially younger children.
“Why are you making these transgender girls into super girls that are just going to dominate everything?” said Senate Minority Leader Harold Jones II, D-Augusta. “They just want to play. They just want to participate. Have you ever thought about that?”
Legislative Republicans have repeatedly pointed to a 2022 NCAA swim meet at Georgia Tech where a transgender student born male dominated the women’s competition.
Legislation the General Assembly passed in 2022 empowering state athletic associations to ban transgender athletes has also eliminated such occurrences, but Republicans say a law is still needed.
Democrats have taunted their GOP opponents over the fairness issue by pitching their own equity legislation.
They have bills before the state House of Representatives and the Senate that seek to mandate equal funding for girls’ sports teams in schools. They also tried, and failed, to amend SB 1 with such a requirement, then derided Republicans over their vote against it.
“My colleagues are not invested in truly leveling the playing field for girls’ sports,” said Sen. Kim Jackson, D-Stone Mountain, a co-author of the failed amendment.
SB 1 passed 35-17, with two Democrats crossing the aisle to support the measure.
The measure now goes to the state House, where Republican leaders have their own legislation on the issue in House Bill 267.
The support by the GOP leadership in both chambers hints at a likelihood that something will pass on the issue this year. Georgia would then join more than two dozen states with a similar prohibition on the participation of transgender athletes in school sports.
by Ty Tagami | Feb 4, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Sex and school sports will be a priority for both chambers of Georgia’s General Assembly this year, with House Speaker Jon Burns announcing Tuesday that his caucus will have its own version of legislation banning transgender athletes from participating in girls’ and women’s sports.
Republicans in the state Senate have a head start on the issue.
A GOP-led Senate committee passed a bill last week that says student athletes in middle school through college can compete only on teams that match the sex on their birth certificates. At a news conference on Monday, Republican leaders of the Senate announced that the issue would be a top priority for them, something that was already clear from the title of their bill — Senate Bill 1.
Even so, Burns, R-Newington, said the House needed its own version.
“I’m not sure what’s in Senate Bill 1,” he said. “We’ve been focused on providing these safeguards, leveling these playing fields, working with good partners to perfect this legislation.”
The House version will be introduced by Rep. Josh Bonner, R-Fayetteville. It appears to differ significantly from the Senate’s in at least one key way: It would affect public school sports starting in kindergarten, Burns said, rather than in middle school.
Like SB 1, the House version would affect private schools that compete against public schools, he said.
In explaining the need for such legislation, Republicans have pointed to a much-publicized NCAA swim meet at Georgia Tech in 2022 when a transgender athlete dominated the women’s field. GOP lawmakers say that incident demonstrates that women and girls need to be protected from competing against men and boys — and from sharing locker rooms with them.
Democrats contend it was an isolated incident unlikely to recur and that Republicans are trying to score political points by promoting a solution in search of a nonexistent problem, particularly in K-12 schools.
Asked about that, Burns said he doesn’t disclose everything he knows, “but I know some situations where boys have competed against girls.”
Democrats introduced their own bills this week, also in the name of protecting female athletes.
But their legislation is focused on equal funding.
Senate Bill 41 and House Bill 221 target wiggle room in the current law governing gender equity in sports by proposing the deletion of the words “all reasonable efforts” from language requiring equal opportunities for girls.
The Democrats’ legislation would clarify that equity means “funds, facilities access, equipment, supplies, and other resources” and that schools would be in noncompliance if they failed to provide these.
It would allow lawsuits to enforce the provisions.
Burns said the GOP House legislation builds off a 2022 state law that authorized the Georgia High School Association to ban transgender athletes.
That law allowed athletic associations to “prohibit students whose gender is male from participating in athletic events that are designated for students whose gender is female.” The GHSA promptly did just that.
Both of the bills by Democrats would remove that language from the law.
by Ty Tagami | Jan 30, 2025 | Capitol Beat News Service
ATLANTA – Sex and school sports are among the first items on the agenda for the Georgia Senate this year, as lawmakers took up legislation Thursday to control participation in team competitions.
A Senate panel heard and passed Senate Bill 1, which would prohibit students from competing on teams that do not match the sex on their birth certificates.
These restrictions already exist at the high school level after the state empowered the Georgia High School Association to enforce restrictions in 2022. But SB 1 would write these rules into law in middle school and in high school — and extend them to higher education. It would also apply to private schools that compete against public schools.
The proposed law would “put a boundary around women’s sport that excludes those who have male advantage,” said Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, the bill’s chief sponsor and the chairman of a special legislative committee that studied the issue late last year.
Public schools would face loss of state funding for failure to comply.
Democrats on the committee pushed back, saying lawmakers should be focusing on learning loss instead. The bill would empower parents to file complaints against athletes, and Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, said girls misidentified as male could face taunting, with consequences for their mental health.
Several current and former women college swimmers spoke in support of the measure via Zoom. They complained about losing at a 2022 NCAA swim meet at Georgia Tech when Lia Thomas, a transgender student born male, competed against women.
They also complained about having to share a locker room with Thomas.
“This was the pinnacle of our competing careers, but it wasn’t just about losing a trophy or a spot on the podium,” said Kaitlynn Wheeler, who was swimming for the University of Kentucky. “It was about our dignity.”
Critics said the bill’s supporters were cherry-picking one well-known incident and that they were pushing a solution to something that isn’t really a problem.
A girl’s athletic coach said she’d never heard of another such incident in Georgia. A lawyer with Lambda Legal, which advocates for transgender people, said the bill would invite lawsuits and that taxpayers would bear the cost because transgender students have won against such prohibitions in other states.
A transgender person called the bill “dehumanizing,” and a pediatrician said it would undermine mental health.
“Transgender girls are not predators. They’re children, they’re students,” said Dr. Jodi Greenwald, of Roswell. Excluding them from sports would lead to ostracization, she said. “They fall into depression and often commit suicide.”
The vote to pass SB 1 out of the Senate Education and Youth Committee was 9-3, with Sen. Freddie Powell Sims, D-Dawson, the lone Democrat to join the Republican majority. It now heads to the full Senate.
