Ga. bill would curb public employees’ access to gender-affirming care
ATLANTA, Ga. - A bill introduced in the Georgia Senate would prohibit the state insurance plan from paying for gender-affirming care.
Senate Bill 39 would prohibit the state’s insurance plan from paying for gender-affirming care and prevent doctors employed by the state government from istering gender-affirming care.
The bill moved forward after a 6-3 committee vote on Tuesday.
“What this bill says is we are not going to spend state taxpayer dollars on transgender surgeries in our state,” Republican Sen. Blake Tillery of Vidalia, the sponsor, told the Senate Insurance and Labor Committee.
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In October 2023, the state settled a lawsuit brought by two transgender men and the mother of a transgender child alleging that the insurance plan illegally discriminated against them by refusing to pay for their lawsuit. The lawsuit is directly referenced in Senate Bill 39.
Earlier Tuesday in a nearby courtroom, Houston County Sheriff’s Sgt. Anna Lange watched as lawyers clashed before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over whether her county’s insurance plan must keep paying gender affirming care benefits she won through a federal suit.
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“Trans people are people, and we deserve to be treated just like everybody else,” Lange said afterward.
Scott and Khara Hayden, a transgender woman who is an information technology specialist, both testified they might leave state employment if benefits end on Jan. 1, 2026, as the bill proposes.
“If you approve this bill, essentially you’re going to take away the care I need to continue living,” Hayden testified, saying a lack of hormone therapy would force her into early menopause.
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Even if the state can scrap the settlements, opponents say they’d sue again to strike down unconstitutional denial of benefits to transgender people because of their sex. The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that under a 1964 civil rights law, employers couldn’t discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender employees “because of sex.”
“It’s discriminatory, 100%, that they’re specifically targeting the transgender individuals and the care that they need,” Hayden said.
According to the state government, the state’s insurance plan covers around 660,000 people.
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