Georgia Legislature Renews Push To Ban Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports

Georgia’s Senate special committee on women’s sports is recommending the legislature move to require student-athletes to compete on sports teams that match their biological sex. In a hearing Friday, the committee adopted a series of recommendations regarding transgender athletes, including requiring students in high school and college teams to play on teams and use dressing rooms and showers that match biological sex. The panel also recommends requiring private institutions to comply with the limitations when they compete against public schools. Additionally, lawmakers on the panel say a law that gave sports associations the power to regulate transgender athletes’ participation should be repealed. In 2022, lawmakers in the state punted the question of whether transgender athletes could play in high school sports to the Georgia High School Association. That decision was made in a last-minute rush before the legislature adjourned the 2022 session after a bill requiring transgender athletes to compete in sports that match their biological sex was blocked by the House speaker, David Ralston. Lawmakers on the committee, comprised of six Republicans and two Democrats, said in their recommendations adopted on Friday, “This is an issue that should be decided by the people’s elected representatives.”After the committee issued its recommendations, Georgia’s lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, posted on X, “The Senate continues to lead on efforts to protect women’s sports and all of the work they put into competing and becoming elite athletes. Ensuring that in the future, females participating in Georgia sports are protected at any level will be a priority during the 2025 session.”An attorney for the civil rights organization Lambda Legal, Sasha Buchert, opposed the recommendations at an earlier meeting of the committee and suggested that “what proposal” was approved could have a “lifelong effect” on the mental health of transgender students because of “demonizing terms” used while talking about them. While the Georgia legislature failed to pass a bill requiring transgender to compete on teams that match their biological sex in 2022, it is expected to adopt the committee’s recommendations in the upcoming session as the new House speaker, Jon Burns, has been much more vocal about the issue.Mr. Burns has said there is “nothing more important” than passing legislation to “protect the integrity and fairness of girls’ sports at every level here in Georgia.”

Georgia Legislature Renews Push To Ban Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports

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