Georgia’s 26 public universities and colleges voted unanimously on Tuesday to ask the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) to ban transgender-identifying male athletes from competing in women’s sports.
Regents of the state university system’s more than two dozen schools, including the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech, asked the NCAA and the National Junior College Athletic Association to conform to a policy set forth by the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) earlier this year, the Associated Press reports. In April, the sports federation largely approved the banning of male athletes from women’s sports at its 241 member institutions.
Under the rule, only biological women who have not begun hormone therapy to transition to the opposite sex are allowed to participate in NAIA-sponsored female sports. Those who have begun hormone therapy are barred from intercollegiate competition and are only allowed to participate in workouts, practices, and team activities. Meanwhile, all athletes competing in the NAIA can participate in male sports. That policy went into effect in August.
That same month, the NCAA started following the standards of national and international governing bodies for each sport. Until then, the association followed a 2010 policy that ordered athletes to go on one year of testosterone suppression treatment and submit documented testosterone levels before championships.
When the NAIA policy was approved, the NCAA vowed to ensure “fairness in competition” for all athletes regardless of gender identity. The NCAA did not respond to National Review’s request for comment about the Georgia university system’s unanimous vote.
The move came after Georgia lieutenant governor Burt Jones, as the president officer of the state senate, indicated he would get the Republican-controlled legislature to pass legislation that would ban male athletes from female sports.
“The work female athletes put into competing should be protected at all cost, no matter the age,” Jones said, thanking the university regents for their Tuesday vote. “This action brings us one step closer toward achieving that ultimate goal.”
Georgia Equality was one LGBTQ advocacy group that criticized the regents’ request of the NCAA. The organization’s executive director, Jeff Graham, said the state university system “should recognize the importance of diversity at many levels and should be there to care about the educational experience of all of their students regardless of their gender or gender identity.”
Of the 26 schools within the University System of Georgia, only one does not have a sports program. Of the 25 schools that do, four are members of the National Junior College Athletic Association, five are members of the NAIA, and 16 are members of the NCAA. Both the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech are part of the NCAA.
Georgia Board of Regents secretary and chief lawyer Chris McGraw said the junior college federation permits transgender students to participate in women’s collegiate athletics in some circumstances. He noted that the three associations’ rules for transgender participation in women’s sports are inconsistent.
The topic was hotly debated in Georgia’s general assembly in 2022 when lawmakers passed a law permitting the Georgia High School Association to regulate transgender women’s involvement in female sports. That association then banned male athletes from its sponsored female sports events.
Transgender woman Lia Thomas’s participation in the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championships inspired the 2022 law. Now, five former college swimmers — most notably Riley Gaines — are suing the NCAA and Georgia Tech for letting Thomas compete and win the 500-meter freestyle for the University of Pennsylvania.
The University System of Georgia is named in the lawsuit for allowing Georgia Tech to host a swimming event where Thomas participated and shared a locker room with other swimmers in the women’s competition. Georgia Tech and the university system denied they had any role in deciding whether Thomas participated or what locker room the transgender student-athlete used.
In late August, Jones and other Georgia Republicans on a senate committee heard testimony from the five plaintiffs who brought the case. Leaders of Georgia Tech and the public-university system declined to testify.