The Georgia Senate Special Committee on the Protection of Women’s Sports has adopted a recommendation that based on an athlete’s biological sex at birth, men cannot compete in sports designated for women.
The committee adopted the final report on Friday, Dec. 13. Its recommendations are:
- Repeal the delegation of authority by the General Assembly to high school athletic associations to regulate participation in women’s sports. This is an issue that should be decided by the people’s elected representatives.
- Provide protections in statute for the protection of women’s sports in Georgia at the secondary and collegiate levels for public high schools, colleges, universities, and private institutions competing with and against public schools in sports, including rules providing that, based on the athlete’s biological sex at birth, men cannot compete in sports designated for women.
- Require schools that host or sponsor sporting events to provide separate changing and dressing facilities for male and female athletes based on their biological sex at birth.
- Provide enforcement options for rules regarding women’s sports participation and separate changing and dressing facilities, including grievance proceedings and civil remedies for aggrieved participants and the authority to withhold state funding from schools that fail or refuse to abide by these rules.
- Adopt other rules, as necessary, to ensure that the regulation of sports is based on promoting and preserving competitive fairness and protecting student safety and that female student-athletes have fair opportunities to demonstrate their strength, skills, and athletic abilities and to obtain recognition, accolades, college scholarships, and the numerous other long-term benefits that result from participating and competing in sports.
“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,” Georgia Lt. Governor Burt Jones said in a statement. “Ensuring that in the future, females participating in Georgia sports are protected at any level will be a priority during the 2025 session.”
