Georgia ban on transgender girls, women playing female sports inches toward passage

Transgender student-athletes could soon be blocked from playing K-12 and college team sports based on their “self-identification.”

A House panel passed Senate Bill 1 on Tuesday, which would keep students at public K-12 schools and universities from participating in single-sex team sports according to their gender identity. The legislation is limited to sports teams, restrooms and locker rooms. Private schools that play against teams at public schools also would have to abide by the law.

The bill would define “sex” as “an individual’s biological sex, either male or female,” something the legislation said can be observed or clinically verified at or before birth. It removes references to “gender” from state laws dealing with school sports.

Both chambers filed — and passed — legislation regulating school sports this year. But the House’s version was broader, changing most, if not all, references to “gender” in the state code to “sex.” That meant it touched parts of state law ranging from regulating foster parents to drivers licenses. But lawmakers on Tuesday reached a compromise, tailoring the bill to focus on sports.

“This is a bill that deals only with sports,” said state Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Republican from Cumming who sponsored SB 1. “The House did have a bill that was more expansive than that, but this bill always has been about sports and the (change) recognizes that.”

Supporters of the bill say people who were assigned male at birth have physical advantages over those assigned female. They say the bill is needed not only to create fairness in sports, but also to keep women and girls safe.

Opponents of the measure say instead of protecting women and girls, as the bill’s supporters say is the purpose of the legislation, it opens them up to traumatizing experiences.

“This anti-trans legislation is also anti-woman legislation,” said Evalina Pierce, who plays ultimate frisbee. “The messages you are sending to women — trans women and cis women (women who identify as the gender they were assigned at birth) — is to be smaller, weaker, less.”

Legislators appear poised to approve some version of the measure into law this year, although there are no known cases in Georgia of transgender women or girls trying to play female sports in public schools. A poll from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution earlier this year 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.

For years, the Senate has tried to pass versions of SB 1, sending bills to the House to languish. In 2022, the chambers compromised to task athletic associations with investigating whether there was a need to ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams.

The Georgia High School Association quickly voted to require athletes to compete based on their biological sex, effectively banning transgender athletes from participating based on gender identity.

This year’s effort is named after Riley Gaines, the Kentucky swimmer who tied for fifth place with a transgender woman in a meet at Georgia Tech in 2022. Gaines has since traveled the country pushing states to pass similar measures and served as a surrogate for President Donald Trump on the campaign trail last year.