20-02-2025
Georgia House panel OKs bill to bar trans girls from playing school sports on girls' teams
Rep. Josh Bonner, right, presents his transgender sports bill before committee, alongside Chelsea Thompson, general counsel for Frontline Policy Council. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
A House subcommittee moved forward a bill that would bar transgender girls from playing sports on girls' teams in schools of all grade levels, including college.
'All we're attempting to do through this legislation, Mr. Chairman, is simply provide a level playing field for the girls in Georgia,' said the bill's sponsor, Fayetteville Republican Rep. Josh Bonner. 'To make sure that when they step on that athletic field, that all things are equal, so that, essentially, biological males are not competing against biological females.'
Speaker Jon Burns listed the measure as a top priority for this year's session. House Bill 267, also known as the Riley Gaines Act, also mandates separate restroom, locker and sleeping facilities for student athletes based on the sex they were assigned at birth during sporting events, but allows for 'reasonable accommodations' including allowing the use of a single-occupancy restroom for students who do not feel comfortable using facilities that correspond to their sex at birth.
Republicans like Dawsonville Republican Rep. Brent Cox called the bill a victory for women's sports. Cox said the bill reminded him of his mother, who graduated high school in 1961 and was an exceptional basketball player in a time when women were often not encouraged to play sports.
'She fought (for), as many have, (the 1972 sports gender equity law) which now we know under Title IX,' he said. 'And myself coaching, it's something that I personally am passionate about, the girls having the opportunities to play against the girls, because of all that happened from the early parts of the 1900s to get us to where we are today.'
Unlike a girls' sports bill that recently passed the Senate, the proposed House legislation also replaces the word 'gender' with 'sex' throughout the state's code.
'It addresses any number of areas of code, everything from the legal, in terms of dealing with legal documents, to organ donation, to crime statistics and reporting, that kind of thing,' Bonner said. 'And that's simply to make sure that when we collect that data, that we have very decisive and definitive data points so that we know everything from the crime statistics to how they're annotating that sex on their organ donations and things like that.'
The removal of gender from the state's landmark 2020 hate crimes law in particular vexed Democratic state Rep. Park Cannon, an Atlanta Democrat.
The bill would remove crimes based on the victim's gender as a category for enhanced sentences under the law, though it would keep sex and sexual orientation as eligible categories, among others like race and religion. It specifies that state agencies that keep track of vital statistics for things like public health, economic measurements or crime identify each individual by their sex at birth.
Cannon said those changes will strip transgender Georgians from the hate crime law's protections.
'If someone does experience a hate-based incident, which, here in District 58, we have recently seen Atlanta Police capture somebody who has intentionally been harming transgender women, it would not allow for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations to get that information and store it appropriately.'
'It was a bipartisan bill,' she added. 'It was one of my most proud moments being a member, and so to juxtapose feeling so proud with that legislation and feeling so vulnerable with this legislation, I'm really hoping that the majority will make some amendments and sit on this bill throughout the rest of the session.'
More than a dozen people came to the subcommittee's Wednesday hearing, mostly to urge members to vote against the bill.
Audrey Lux said she competed in women's rowing as a college student in states including Georgia but never won it big.
'I managed to avoid all controversy and publicity during my time in crew. The reason you haven't heard of me on the news is because I was simply not a great athlete,' she said. 'And that doesn't fit well into your narrative. I practiced just as hard as the other women, but I was simply not as fast as some of them, and that's just the biological reality.'
Lux and other opponents of the bill argued that transgender people are relatively uncommon in the first place and are not particularly likely to be dominant in or even play sports. They compared keeping them out through legislation to bullying a vulnerable population.
'This bill, in short, is part of a larger project to strip all dignity and rights from transgender Georgians out of the law,' said Brittany Stancoff. 'And that is not something I particularly appreciate, as we haven't done anything to deserve this. I sell used books. I don't see how this is some widespread issue when there is only one case you can keep bringing back up over and over and over.'
Stancoff was referring to Riley Gaines, the namesake of Georgia's bill who became an outspoken opponent of transgender participation in girls' sports after she and other swimmers competed against and shared a locker room with a transgender woman at a 2022 championship held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
The NCAA changed its eligibility rules after that competition following numerous complaints.
Bonner offered a different Riley to testify at Wednesday's hearing, Riley Jones, daughter of South Forsyth Republican Rep. Todd Jones and former high school state champion for girls' pole vault.
Jones said she didn't compete against any transgender athletes but likely would have lost if she had.
'The reason why I was able to win my state title was because I only went against girls,' she said. 'If I went against boys, they would have killed me. My senior year, I went 12'6' to win the state record and to win the competition. The boys, I believe there were three over 15'6', and now that's not even the woman's record.'
The bill could now be headed to the full House Education Committee. It will need to pass the full House by Crossover Day, March 6, to have a clear chance of becoming law under the normal process.
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