Georgia Sneaks In Transgender Kids Ban

In the wee hours of the morning Georgia Lawmakers sneaked through legislation allowing discrimination against Transgender kids ability to playing school sports. Georgia House Bill 1084 is legislation that creates an athletics committee with the authority to ban transgender youth from playing on sports teams aligning with their gender identity. Cathyrn Oakley, HRC’s State Legislative Director & Senior Counsel stated, “Everything about this legislation & the way it was passed demonstrates an intent by Gov. Brian Kemp & Republican legislative leaders to evade accountability for hurting Georgia’s transgender youth. By amending this bill on the last day of the session to focus on transgender students, they prevented the people actually impacted from speaking out as to why this is wrong. By passing it after midnight, they evaded immediate scrutiny for taking a shameful vote & by punting the decision to a newly created athletics committee, they get to pretend their hands are clean once specific, discriminatory policies are put into place. Make no mistake — there is no crisis with transgender youth playing sports in Georgia. Decades of experience in states across the country shows that this is a non-issue. Self-serving politicians, catering to an extreme portion of their party’s base, are demonstrating that they’re willing to harm vulnerable kids who just want to play with their friends. If Governor Kemp signs this bill, he will be marking himself once again as someone willing to harm a vulnerable LGBTQ+ population — in this case, children — to serve his own political ambitions.” This comes as a similar Utah bill was vetoed by Republican Governor Spencer Cox & Republican Governor Eric Holcomb of Indiana vetoed a bill discriminating against transgender kids playing sports last month citing a lack of evidence to justify the bill. For More Info…