Transgender sports ban advances out of Georgia Senate committee; gender-affirming care under fire

by Ross Williams and Jill Nolin, Georgia Recorder
January 30, 2025

State lawmakers have advanced a bill expanding Georgia’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports out of committee, and other Senate bills targeting gender-affirming care, including for adults, are already in the queue.

The Senate Education and Youth Committee passed a long-expected bill that aims to prevent transgender girls from playing school sports on girls’ teams at every grade level as well as college.

The law bans boys from playing on teams designated for girls, though girls can play on teams designated for boys if there is no equivalent girls’ team. Schools would still be able to offer co-ed sports to any student. Colleges would also fall under the bill, and schools that buck the bill could lose state funding.

The law would apply to private schools that play against public schools. The bill also sets up requirements for separate male and female restrooms and locker rooms and allows a complaint process.

The bill’s sponsor, Cumming Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal, said it will ensure a level playing field for female athletes.

“We essentially created a category for women that by definition excludes male participation,” he said. “Because if you have a sport open to members of both sexes, what we know… is it will be dominated by men, by males. That is also indisputable by a lot of pieces of data that we have seen.”

Four college swimmers participated virtually to speak on behalf of the bill. The women are not from Georgia, but lost to transgender athlete Lia Thomas at a competition at Georgia Tech in 2022. The four also testified that they were made to share a locker room with Thomas, which they said made them highly uncomfortable.

“We were never asked. We were never given a choice or another option,” said swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler. “We were just expected to be OK with it, to shove down our discomfort, our embarrassment, our fear, because standing up for ourselves would mean being labeled as intolerant or hateful or bigoted. This is the future awaiting your daughters, if you do nothing.”

The NCAA changed its eligibility rules after complaints mounted over Thomas’ victories.

But 22-year-old college cheerleader Bella Bautista said transgender athletes often don’t have an advantage and need to work as hard as cisgender athletes.

“I was never allowed to be on the cheer team at my high school because I wasn’t white enough and I wasn’t womanly enough and I didn’t look good in the uniform, quote, unquote,” Bautista said. “When I got to college, the opportunity opened up for me, and I worked so hard to be able to be on that team. As transgender athletes, we get beat every single day by cisgender athletes, 99% of the time we’re losing, but that is a part of being an athlete. You’re not always going to win everything.”

Atlanta Democratic Sen. RaShaun Kemp warned the bill could invite new lawsuits against the state, either from transgender girls who will not be allowed to play or from cisgender girls who are incorrectly challenged as transgender because of their physical characteristics.

Kemp proposed an amendment to the bill spelling out that judgements on a student’s ability to play will not be based on “visual inspection of such student’s exterior sex organs,” which the committee unanimously approved.

Other Democrats on the committee described the bill as a sign of twisted priorities.

“People don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to dig a dagger and turn a knife and use people for political advantage versus actually trying to do the people’s business,” said Atlanta Democratic Sen. Elena Parent.

Dawson Democratic Sen. Freddie Powell Sims said she also didn’t see the point of the bill.

“I’m really confused because now, right now, as we debate this issue, there are 1,735,585 students in Georgia’s public school system,” she said. “Most of them are seriously suffering from and struggling through learning loss, as we sit here and debate who’s faster, who’s stronger, who’s bigger, who’s whatever. Our literacy rates in the state of Georgia are some of the worst in the southeastern region of the country, of the whole United States of America. Yet and still, we sit here and spend hours and hours debating this issue. What are we doing, Mr. Chairman?”

Sims went on to vote for the bill anyway, declining to comment when asked about her vote after the hearing.

Ban on state-funded treatments

Sims also declined to comment on another proposal to cut off gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery, for state workers, local educators and others on the state health insurance plan that is breaking new ground in the ongoing culture wars in Georgia.

She and fellow Democratic Sen. Ed Harbison of Columbus joined more than two dozen Senate Republicans in sponsoring that bill, filed by Vidalia Republican state Sen. Blake Tillery this week.

If it passes, it would prohibit coverage for gender-affirming care under the state’s insurance plan or through state-funded providers.

Parent said Tillery’s bill represents a shift in target.

Until now, the transgender-related health care measures debated over the last couple years in Georgia have focused on minors, including another bill filed this week that would revive a controversial plan to ban puberty blockers for minors

“So now they’re really invading into adult medical decisions,” Parent said.

The state started to provide gender-affirming care after public workers, including a state employee, a Bibb County educator and another state staffer whose young adult child was enrolled in the state plan, filed a lawsuit that was ultimately settled in late 2023. The state reportedly paid out $365,000 as part of the settlement, according to commentary included in the bill.

The settlement was “entered into by the state health benefit plan and the Attorney General without prior notice to or approval by the General Assembly,” the bill says.

“It should not fall on the state of Georgia and its taxpayers to fund transgender surgeries,” Tillery said in a statement.

Tillery’s bill was filed as President Donald Trump has issued a series of gender-related executive orders on the federal level, including one banning openly transgender people from serving in the armed forces and another declaring that the federal government will only recognize two sexes, male and female, ending “gender ideology extremism.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

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