Senate GOP revives anti-trans bills as election year heats up

“Fifteen days,” state Sen. Sally Harrell said on Day 16 of the 40-day legislative session. “Fifteen days is a record when we didn’t mention transgender people once in this chamber. And I can tell you, it’s been great.”

Harrell, a Democrat from Atlanta with two transgender children, has been at the forefront of the debate since Republican senators first began targeting transgender people in legislation.

“The last five years, all this debate has been so incredibly stressful for me and my family,” Harrell said. “We’ve worked on this transgender issue for five years. Isn’t that enough?”

The new bill, which passed the Senate 30-18 on Tuesday, is now a combination of the original House Bill 54 and two proposals that passed the Senate last year but did not pass the House. Both chambers are controlled by Republicans.

Chris Riley, chief of staff for House Speaker Jon Burns, declined to say if the House was interested in voting on the new legislation.

“The House remains focused on property tax reform, affordability for all Georgians, literacy and insurance reform as it relates to insurance rates and affordable insurance rates for Georgia residents,” Riley said.

State Rep. David Clark, a Republican from Buford who is running for lieutenant governor, sponsored the original version of House Bill 54 before the Senate changed it. He declined to comment on the changes.

One of the changes, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Ben Watson of Savannah, would ban transgender minors from receiving puberty blocking medication.

Watson, a geriatric doctor, said minors with gender dysphoria — the medical diagnosis required for most transgender people to receive gender-affirming care — should go through puberty and turn 18 before deciding if they want to take medical steps.

“Available evidence suggests that … if you don’t give hormones, if you don’t do surgery or if you don’t use puberty blockers, they’ll go through a natural puberty and outgrow this,” he said.

The other measure, sponsored by Senate Appropriations Chair Blake Tillery, would prevent the state employee health insurance program and Medicaid from covering surgeries on transgender patients and hormone therapy that is often prescribed to those diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

While versions of both Watson’s and Tillery’s bills were voted out of House committees, neither came up for a vote on the House floor before the Legislature adjourned.

“Senate Republicans, focused on division, hijacked a bill on home health care to attack transgender kids and adults,” said Bentley Hudgins, lobbyist for Human Rights Campaign. “They couldn’t get their divisive agenda across the finish line last year, so they doubled down on treating children and trans adults as less than. Bullies don’t belong in government.”

Also last year, lawmakers passed a bill requiring transgender girls and women to play sports according to the sex listed on their birth certificate and another bill that bans state funds from being used to pay for gender-affirming care in prisons.

State Sen. RaShaun Kemp, D-Atlanta, decried the reemergence of culture war legislation when both Republicans and Democrats have said the main focus of the 2026 legislative session needs to be affordability.

“This is not making food more affordable. This is not lowering the cost of taxes,” Kemp said. “This is instead telling parents that your child should not have the same rights as other children in this state, your child should be forced to live in a body that they do not feel comfortable with. At some point, this has to stop. … At some point, we just need to leave them alone.”