Georgia House keeps hate crimes protection as it seeks to restrict transgender sports participation

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ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia's state House has backed away from changes to the state's hate crimes law that could have removed protections for crimes against transgender people, even as it moves forward with efforts to put into law restrictions against sports participation for transgender students.

Representatives voted 102-54 for House Bill 267 on Thursday, but only after House leaders on Wednesday stripped out part of the bill that would have changed the hate crimes law that passed in 2020 after the death of Ahmaud Arbery. Three Democrats voted for the bill — Lynn Heffner of Augusta, Tangie Herring of Macon and Dexter Sharper of Valdosta — while a number of other Democrats sat out the vote.

The measure moves to the Senate, which has passed its own separate legislation.

Georgia’s high school athletic association right now bans transgender students from girls' sports participation by policy, but Republican leaders insist the ban needs to be enshrined in law and applied to colleges and universities as well. Laws restricting sports participation for transgender students have passed in 25 other states.

Republican leaders in both the House and Senate have made outlawing transgender girls from girls sports a priority this year as President Donald Trump pursues restrictions at the federal level.

“Female athletes deserve fair competition and that means the chance to maintain the women's divisions distinct from men's categories," said Republican Rep. Josh Bonner of Fayetteville, the bill’s sponsor.

The House bill, heavily influenced by a Christian conservative group called Frontline Policy, replaces most references to “gender” in state law with the word “sex.”

Democratic Rep. Karla Drenner of Avondale Estates called the bill a “calculated, dangerous, deeply discriminatory piece of legislation that goes far beyond the realm of athletics.”

“Let’s call this the erasure of transgender Georgians act today," said Drenner, who was the first openly LGBTQ+ member of the legislature when she was elected in 2000.

It would have originally removed gender from the hate crimes law, which protects against crimes motivated by bias against someone’s sex or gender. Democrats warned that could make it hard to prosecute hate crimes against transgender people, with House Democratic Caucus Leader Tanya Miller saying it could result in “open season” on transgender Georgians.

Bonner said Wednesday that he was making the changes out of an “overabundance of caution and concern” after a lawyer for the General Assembly said the change “would not likely be deemed meaningless by a reviewing court.”

“Nothing changes in that regard from the original bill that passed several years ago,” Bonner said Wednesday.

Georgia’s hate crimes law passed in dramatic fashion months after Ahmaud Arbery was killed by two white men while jogging near Brunswick. The state had gone without a hate crimes law for years after a court struck down a previous version.