The Georgia Senate passed legislation Thursday to ban transgender girls from competing on teams that do not match their sex assigned at birth.
The Senate voted 35-17, largely along party lines, to pass the measure. State Sens. Ed Harbison of Columbus and Freddie Powell Sims of Dawson were the only Democrats to join Republicans in supporting the bill.
The topic has been a legislative priority for Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who is expected to run for governor next year. Some version of the legislation is likely to pass the Georgia General Assembly this year.
House Speaker Jon Burns has also listed regulating transgender girls’ and women’s access to female sports as a top priority for this legislative session. The House proposed a similar version of the Senate bill in their chamber earlier this week.
Senate Bill 1, sponsored by state Sen. Greg Dolezal would bar transgender women and girls from competing in female sporting events at public K-12 schools and colleges — and private schools that compete against public institutions. Instead, transgender girls and women athletes would have to participate on single-sex teams according to the sex listed on their birth certificate. It would also require transgender student-athletes to use restrooms, locker rooms and sleeping quarters according to the sex on their birth certificate.
Supporters of the bill say its passage is about ensuring fairness and safety in girls’ and women’s sports.
“Without a boundary around female sport that excludes male advantage, males would dominate in every major sporting competition,” said Dolezal, R-Cumming.
Transgender girls are already required to play high school sports according to the sex on their birth certificate due to regulations put in place in 2022 by the Georgia High School Association. Still, Dolezal pushed back on Democrats’ assertion that his bill was a “solution in search of a problem.”
“I think that the women that have lost competitions, lost medals, not been All-Americans, who have had volleyballs spiked in their face and had resulting brain damage, they say this is very much a solution that is a result of a problem existing,” he said.
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Credit: Arvin Temkar/AJC
Dolezal referenced the handful of public instances involving transgender athletes that have occurred across a number of years, but opponents of SB 1 say those instances are rare.
Bentley Hudgins, the Georgia state director of the Human Rights Campaign, said legislation such as SB1 puts all women who don’t fit a certain image of femininity at risk of being targeted.
“Deputized gender police will have devastating impacts on all girls and this bill increases the potential for discrimination and abuse against young women of color,” Hudgins said. “It is dishonest and misleading to claim to champion women’s rights while refusing to take serious action on pressing issues making women less safe every day: the maternal mortality crisis, domestic and sexual violence, wage inequality, and school safety.”
Thursday’s Senate vote comes a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order similarly regulating transgender girls and women playing sports. The order instructs federal agencies to reinterpret Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs, to prohibit transgender girls from competing in any school-sponsored athletic events for women. It threatens to deny federal funding to schools that flout the order.
Republican lawmakers have called Trump’s Georgia victory in November as a green light to continue to push “culture war” issues.
While Republicans in the General Assembly may feel emboldened by Trump’s victory, their interest in legislation targeting transgender Georgians goes back years. And a poll from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month found just more than 70% of Georgia voters surveyed said they support requiring student-athletes to play sports according to the sex on their birth certificate.
In 2023, the Georgia General Assembly passed a law banning doctors from giving certain medical treatments to transgender minors.
The year before, Republican leadership in the House and Senate compromised on the issue of transgender sports. It tasked athletic associations with investigating whether there was a need to ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams.
GHSA quickly voted to require athletes to compete based on their biological sex, effectively banning transgender athletes from participating based on gender identification.
With legislation similar to SB 1 likely to pass, some LGBTQ+ rights advocates say they worry efforts from Republican leaders to regulate transgender people could go further.
Republican senators have already proposed legislation that would ban state-funded health plans from paying for transgender care as well as a bill that would ban puberty blockers for minors seeking treatment to align with their gender identity.
Democratic state Sen. Kim Jackson, the first openly gay senator elected to the Legislature, attempted to amend SB 1 to require school districts ensure that boys’ and girls’ teams be given comparable funding, access to facilities, equipment and other accommodations.
Republicans, joined by Sims, rejected her amendment.
“It makes it clear that the men in this chamber who have stood up and spoken before me from the majority party do not actually, really and truly want to bring true equality to girls’ sports,” said Jackson, a Democrat from Pine Lake.
SB 1 now goes to the House for its consideration.
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