Georgia Introduces Bill to Ban Trans Athletes from Sports

Georgia has introduced Senate Bill 1, titled the “Fair and Safe Athletic Opportunities Act.” The first bills of the legislative calendar are typically used to highlight hot-button issue for the purposes of attracting attention. The Georgia Senate has chosen Trans-exclusion as their main issue this year.

Specifically, the bill changes the term ‘Gender’ to ‘Sex’ and bans Trans athletes from competing in contact sports, including basketball, football, lacrosse and soccer, in local and public school systems. The law specifically defines Sex as “a student’s biological sex based exclusively on the student’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.” Students who feel they have been unfairly competed against will have the private ability to sue the schools or institutions in the courts.

In 2022, Governor Brian Kemp signed Georgia House Bill 1084, which created an athletics committee with the authority to ban transgender youth from playing on sports teams aligning with their gender identity from high school sports. The current bill will further entrench the discrimination into Georgia’s legal code and expand its scope coverage to Middle school and potentially public colleges. This follows the growing list of 23 states who are banning or restricting Trans athletes from playing in high school sports.

Contact information for the Senators who are sponoring the bill is below: