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.
‘SB 1 is about scoring political points at expense of transgender youth’
Georgia Equality, the state’s LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said in a statement it was disappointed by the Senate’s passage of SB 1 that would impact all girls, transgender or not.
“Anyone who loses can throw a tantrum, bring a lawsuit, or bully the champion, and girls could be accused of being transgender as a result, simply for being ‘too good’ at their sport,” according to Georgia Equality.
“Sports serve to teach invaluable, lifelong lessons about teamwork, discipline and hard work. We firmly believe that every person deserves the opportunity to benefit from these invaluable life lessons.”
Not only did the Senate vote to pass this divisive and discriminatory bill, but they also rejected two amendments: one which attempted to narrow the bill’s broad scope, and one which would have improved gender equity in sports by enforcing equal funding, facilities, and resources for boys’ and girls’ sports, Georgia Equality added.
“This move in particular makes it clear that SB 1 is not actually about fairness in girls’ sports as proponents claim; it’s about scoring political points at the expense of transgender youth,” the statement said.
“Our elected officials should be focused on setting up our schools to provide the best possible education and helping to improve the well-being of all students, not trying to advance a politically-motivated agenda that would single out and exclude an already vulnerable group of students.”
Dyana Bagby contributed to this report.