HB104: HB104 Equal Athletic Opportunities Act; enact

Georgia already has a law, called the Quality Basic Education Act, that bars sex discrimination in school sports and requires schools to try to give boys and girls equal athletic opportunities. HB104 rewrites that law's key section (O.C.G.A. § 20-2-315) and renames it the 'Equal Athletic Opportunities Act.' It replaces the word 'gender' with 'sex' throughout and adds a new definition: sex means a person's biological sex based on reproductive biology and genetics at birth, as shown on an original birth certificate. The bill requires every interscholastic team to be labeled male, female, or coed, and makes it illegal for male students to play on female-designated teams or vice versa. It keeps existing rules on separate facilities, equal funding factors, complaint procedures, and state board enforcement, including withholding state funds from noncompliant districts. It also lets the state high school athletic association adopt its own policy barring male students from female events, applied to all participating public high schools.

• Renames and rewrites O.C.G.A. § 20-2-315 as the 'Equal Athletic Opportunities Act,' replacing references to 'gender' with a new legal definition of 'sex.'
• Defines sex as a person's biological sex based on reproductive biology and genetics at birth, generally confirmed by the original birth certificate.
• Requires every interscholastic team to be designated as male, female, or coed for each competition.
• Prohibits male students from participating in female-designated athletic programs, events, or teams, and prohibits female students from participating in male-designated ones.
• Allows the state high school athletic association to adopt a policy barring male students from female events, applied uniformly to all participating public high schools.
• Keeps existing provisions requiring equal athletic opportunity factors, complaint and grievance procedures, and state funding penalties for noncompliant local school systems.

Public school students who play interscholastic or intramural sports, particularly transgender students; local school systems and public schools that must classify teams and enforce eligibility; participating private schools that compete against public schools; and the state high school athletic association and Department of Education, which oversee compliance.

The bill would change who is eligible to play on girls' and boys' school sports teams in Georgia by tying eligibility to biological sex at birth rather than gender identity, and it gives schools and the state athletic association new tools, including funding penalties, to enforce that classification.

• Section 1 rewrites O.C.G.A. § 20-2-315, adding definitions for 'sex,' 'male,' 'female,' 'covered entity,' and 'participating private school.'
• Subsection (c) bars discrimination based on sex in school athletics while subsection (e) requires every team to be designated male, female, or coed.
• Subsection (e)(3)-(4) makes it illegal for male students to join female-designated teams and vice versa, with no coed exception for those categories.
• Subsection (f) keeps the nine listed factors (equipment, scheduling, coaching, facilities, publicity, etc.) used to judge whether equal athletic opportunity exists.
• Subsection (l) preserves the multi-year enforcement process, letting the State Board of Education order corrective plans, postseason bans, or withholding of state funds for willful noncompliance.
• Section 2 amends O.C.G.A. § 20-2-316 to let the state's high school athletic association adopt a policy barring male students from female-designated events, applied to all its member public high schools.
• Section 3 repeals any conflicting laws.

1. 2025-01-28House Second Readers (House)
2. 2025-01-27House First Readers (House)
3. 2025-01-17House Hopper (House)

• Brent Cox (R, HD-028)Primary sponsor
• Rick Jasperse (R, HD-011)
• Carter Barrett (R, HD-024)
• Charles Cannon (R, HD-172)
• Chris Erwin (R, HD-032)
• Mitchell Horner (R, HD-003)

• school sports
• transgender athletes
• gender in sports
• high school athletics
• education law