ATLANTA – Georgia's state Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would cut off public funding for gender-affirming care for adults, but the future of the legislation remains cloudy in the state House, one illustration of how the Republican-controlled swing state has been slow to join the blizzard of laws targeting transgender people.
Senators voted 33-19 to pass Senate Bill 39, which would bar state money for gender-affirming care in state employee and university health insurance plans, Medicaid and the prison system.
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The measure was pushed by state Sen. Blake Tillery, a Vidalia Republican, who repeatedly characterized the bill as only affecting gender-affirming surgeries for minors until he acknowledged under questioning from Democrats that it actually covers a broad range of care for adults as well.
“This bill is saying we’re not going to use state taxpayer dollars to pay for transgender surgeries,” Tillery said.
If enacted, the bill would put Georgia, which previously partially banned gender-affirming care for minors, at the forefront of restricting funding for gender-affirming care for adults.
Democrats point to court decisions to say it would violate federal law. They also say Republicans are bullying a politically unpopular minority to score political points.
“All of these efforts are not going to erase transgender men, transgender women from our society,” said Sen. RaShaun Kemp, an Atlanta Democrat who noted he is a married gay man with children. “And that seems like what this body is trying to do.”
Georgia has settled a series of lawsuits granting gender-affirming care benefits to state employees, public university employees, Medicaid beneficiaries and state prisoners.
Some advocates say the state made binding contracts in those settlements and can’t legally reverse the deals. But Tillery argues that the state can change the terms of health insurance contracts.
The lawsuits alleged that denial of benefits to transgender people is illegally discriminatory after the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that employers couldn’t discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender employees “because of sex.”
“The law is clearly illegal, quite frankly,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Harold Jones II of Augusta said after Tuesday’s debate. “There’s no hope for the law to withstand any kind of constitutional challenge.”
Tillery, though, said he didn’t believe the 2020 Supreme Court decision blocks his bill.
“It doesn’t say if you’re an adult, you can’t have transgender care,” Tillery said. “It says if you’re an adult, you can’t use state taxpayer dollars to have transgender surgeries.”
Georgia Republicans have made a priority this year of banning transgender girls and women from playing school and college sports, in line with executive orders by Donald Trump targeting transgender people, but many states have already taken that step. Current Georgia law gives that power to a high school athletic federation, which banned transgender athletes in 2022.
State House Speaker Jon Burns, a Newington Republican, has said he wants a “narrow focus” on the sports legislation and expressed little interest in other bills. That approach reflects differences between the Senate, where Republicans have gerrymandered themselves into a 33-23 majority, and the House, where the GOP majority is less secure. Senate Republicans often pitch their legislation to GOP partisans, while House Republicans have had to work to maintain a 100-80 majority.
The House calculus is more reflective of results statewide, where Republicans usually win, but strong Democrats can beat weak GOP candidates. That dynamic gave Georgia two Democratic U.S. senators before Trump won the state by 2 percentage points in 2024.