Georgia Senate Passes Bill 435, Save Girls’ Sports Act

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

ATLANTA — A state Senate bill that would bar transgender athletes from participating in gender-appropriate school sports is becoming law in Georgia.

Senate Bill 435 cleared a major hurdle this week. While the Save Girls’ Sports Act has a long way to go before it impacts Georgia schools, the law has already surpassed a nearly identical bill from last year’s session.

The bill would require Georgia students to participate in high school athletics according to the gender listed on their birth certificates and “a person whose gender is male, participation in interscholastic or intramural athletics sports intended for women.” , is prohibited”.

The bill employs a definition of gender that contradicts the global medical consensus, which sees gender as “socially constructed” rather than invariant at birth.

Georgia law states that gender means “a person’s biological sex, which shall be recognized solely on the basis of a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth.”

The law passed the Senate on Thursday and will now go to the House of Representatives for consideration.

I look forward to supporting legislation to keep CRT out of our schools, ensuring fairness in school sports, drafting a Parents’ Rights in Education bill, and addressing obscene materials online and in our school libraries. #SOTS2022

— Brian Kemp (@BrianKempGA) January 13, 2022

Gov. Brian Kemp endorsed the bill in his State of the State address, saying, “I strongly support it [legislation] To ensure fairness in school sports.”

The legislation, supported by over two dozen Republicans alongside Kemp, has cultivated controversy across party lines since its inception.

“We separate athletes based on their weight in wrestling or their age group or height,” said Rep. Philip Singleton (R-Sharpsburg), who introduced a similar bill in a previous legislature. “Their sex is a category in which they are separated so that there is parity on the sports field.”

Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ civil rights legal organization with an office in Decatur, said the bill would harm students and violate federal laws.

“Excluding transgender students from athletics is not only harmful to those students, but also violates federal law and exposes schools to major liability risk. For example, SB would effectively bar 435 transgender students from participating in athletics, in violation of Title IX, the federal statute prohibiting sex discrimination in education,” said Michael Shutt, regional director of Lambda Legal Southern, in a press release.

Senate Bill 266, almost identical to this year’s Save Girls’ Sports Act, passed the Senate Education and Youth Committee during last year’s legislative session. However, the bill did not make it into the Senate. With the support of the Peach State’s conservative leaders during an election year and over a dozen Republican co-sponsors, this year’s version has already surpassed its predecessor.

With a 102 Republican-77 Democrat split in the Georgia House of Representatives, the GOP has the power to make this law.

For Jen Slipakoff of Kennesaw, the mother of a 14-year-old girl entering kindergarten, the bill unnecessarily highlights transgender children.

“I think trans kids are already going through their lives feeling like all eyes are on them, feeling like they’re different, feeling like they don’t belong. And what do we do? We’re passing a law that literally says you don’t belong,” Slipakoff told 11Alive’s Doug Richards.