Music and laughter echoed throughout the evening air at Central Park in Old Fourth Ward as dozens of LGBTQ+ families and allies gathered to play kickball and tug of war, lined up to get colorful temporary tattoos and face paint, and raise money for trans residents in need.
The July 30 field day event, hosted by a coalition of local LGBTQ+ organizations, came at a time where attacks on trans and LGBTQ+ rights are taking place in Georgia and across the country. In June, a U.S. Supreme Court decision fortified Senate Bill 1 — a Georgia law that bans transgender women from playing on women’s sports teams in K-12 schools and public universities.
Bella Bautista, a trans activist and founder of This Doesn’t Define Me, a nonprofit dedicated to helping trans residents in the Southeast, said the event was designed to be an evening centering joy amid troubling times for the trans and gender expansive community.
“I think it’s important now more than ever to have a space where trans kids and allies can come and play because this is what [state lawmakers’] talking point is all about: It’s to villainize the trans community and to demonize us,” Bautista said. “And when they talk about protecting kids, trans kids are not in the same equation.”
Senate Bill 1, also known as the Riley Gaines Act, is named after a college swimmer who tied with a transgender swimmer in a tournament at Georgia Tech in 2022. The bill was officially signed into law last April in Georgia.
The legislation also designates separate changing rooms, restrooms, and sleeping facilities for male and female student athletes. Schools that fail to comply with the law risk losing state funding.
Advocates and residents are raising alarms that the law will deepen the oppression of trans and gender nonconforming people in Georgia, have a disproportionate impact on Black women and girls, and help lay the groundwork to dismantle Title IX.
Advocates are also concerned that the law will negatively impact the privacy and safety of students as invasive methods are being used in states to confirm a student’s sex.
Currently, the Georgia law strictly prohibits schools or athletic associations from “verify[ing] or confirm[ing] a student’s sex through visual inspection of such student’s external sex organs,” but “not prohbit[ing] reliance on medical records or other standard school medical procedures to verify or confirm a student’s sex.”
As the law brings increased surveillance of students’ bodies, Noël Heatherland, the statewide organizing and outreach manager for Georgia Equality, said they are concerned that the law will physically and mentally harm transgender and cisgender girls and women.
“There are very few of us who conform to these Eurocentric, patriarchal expectations of what a woman’s body looks like, so having an attitude that is criticizing and investigating the bodies of women and girls hurts all women and girls,” Heatherland said. “While they intend to only hurt one segment of the population, inevitably it’s hurting all women and girls who are having their bodies called into question and potentially put into harm’s way because of it.”
Dean Steed, director for communications for Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative, said invasive methods of sex confirmation could possibly leave transgender girls vulnerable to sexual harassment.
“When you’re having adults, specifically the coaches of these teams, or teachers who might be monitoring who’s going into which bathroom and which locker room, what happens when we have male teachers who are now feeling empowered to stop these girls, potentially sexually harass these girls, and attempt to have them prove their gender?” Steed said.
What’s happening to athletes in Georgia?
Georgia’s transgender population is 0.06%, according to a study by the National Library of Medicine. Within that population, the current number of publicly out transgender high school or collegiate athletes is widely unknown. The LGBTQ+ media advocacy organization GLAAD stated in 2025 there were zero trans athletes competing in Georgia.
In 2024, Charlie Baker, the president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, testified that at the time there were no more than 10 transgender athletes in college sports. The following year, the NCAA issued an updated policy for transgender student-athletes as the organization now prohibits students that were assigned male at birth from playing on women’s teams. Additionally, students assigned female at birth are prohibited from playing on women’s teams if they have begun hormone therapy.
The Georgia High School Association, which is the state athletic body that oversees high school sports, said in 2022 that students can play school sports only according to the designation on their birth certificate.
For trans athletes barred from participating in school sports, a recreational basketball organization in Atlanta called the Trans Liberation Basketball League has become a safe space for trans and gender-nonconforming people to find community around athletics.
Angel Seetram, a transgender film student at Georgia State University and player with the league, said trans students playing sports for their schools was already a rare occurrence prior to the ongoing bans.
“I think over half a million student athletes are in the NCAA across D1, D2, D3, all levels of collegiate athletics, and… there are openly trans, maybe 10 of them. So I say it to say it’s not like it was even really an option for a lot of us, unfortunately,” Seetram said.
While Seetram, who goes by the pronouns they and them, said they didn’t come out as trans until college, they feel “heartbroken” for younger students impacted by the law.
“They’re just kids. At least I’m a young adult and I have some of the vocabulary and the knowledge of these systems…. and build the semblances of a community,” Seetram said. “When you’re 6 or 8 years old, you don’t really have any of that, and the world is hard enough — and then to have to deal with [the school ban] on top of it, just to me, that’s unimaginable.”
Eniya Lindsey, another player with Trans Liberation Basketball League, called the bans on trans athletes “invasive.”
“It’s about control and surveillance … and that’s a thing that’s kind of just been happening for I don’t know how long,” Lindsey said.
Advocates argue the broader impact of Senate Bill 1 helps set the precedent that transgender and gender-expansive people are to be treated as second-class citizens.
In February, Georgia also passed House Bill 54, which prevents access to gender affirming care, such as puberty blockers, to minors.
“Regardless of whether trans young people and trans adults are playing sports, or involved in athletics, when a bill like Senate Bill 1 passes, or when a Supreme Court decision comes out … it sends a chilling message to trans people to not be a part of society, to be encouraged to be fearful, to stop and think about whether they should even try to be a part of society on different levels, not just sports,” Heatherland said.
Prior to Senate Bill 1 passing, public schools in the metro area had created their own guidelines when it comes to gender identity and bathrooms. Atlanta Public Schools’ policy previously allowed students to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity. Fulton County schools said in 2019 that they work with students on a case-by-case basis.
Now that Senate Bill 1 has the backing of the Supreme Court, schools with gender inclusive policies are facing legal pressure to make immediate changes.
In June, a conservative group filed a federal civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the City Schools of Decatur, according to Decaturish.
The Defense of Freedom Institute, which focuses on education and labor policies, alleged that the school district violated Title IX and Title VI through its equity policies — claiming the district allows students to use bathrooms based on gender identity rather than sex assigned at birth and is permitting transgender students to participate in sports.
Similarly, in April 2025, the district was targeted by the Trump administration over its equity policies. The district did not respond to Capital B Atlanta’s request for comment.
In an email to Capital B Atlanta, a spokesperson for Fulton County Schools said the district will implement Senate Bill 1 “in accordance with Georgia law and applicable Georgia High School Association (GHSA) rules and guidance.”
A spokesperson for Atlanta Public Schools said in an email to Capital B Atlanta that APS “will comply with all state and federal laws.”
The DeKalb County School District declined to comment.
Further impact on Black women and girls
Advocates and lawyers warn that laws banning trans athletes will disproportionately impact Black women and girls due to gender stereotypes and the historic defeminization of Black women.
Andrew Ortiz, the senior policy attorney for the Transgender Law Center, said there are many cases of Black women and women of color having their gender questioned due to “racist” stereotypes around gender.
“Who is going to essentially be quote unquote accused of being trans? It’s going to be young Black girls and women, because we live in a very misogynistic, racist society that has very narrow views of what femininity is and should be, and if somebody falls outside of that perception, they fall into a category that gets questioned,” Ortiz said.
Steed, with the Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative, said the frequent questioning and surveillance of Black female athletes is something that has occurred over time as they challenge society’s Eurocentric views of masculinity and femininity.
“We’ve already seen even with popular athletes such as Serena Williams, Sha’Carri Richardson, and track runner Caster Semenya, where they have been attacked because of their physiques appearing too masculine,” Steed said.
Anthony Pierce, a parent of two children in the Cobb County School District, said he worries about how his daughter, who just started kindergarten, could be put in harm’s way by the law.
“We have so many examples of different Black women being treated masculine or being told that they’re actually trans women independent of any actual evidence or any reason to believe that. It’s just a part of dehumanizing Black women. It’s what we’ve seen in our history and so I’m very concerned that that would be happening to my daughter at any level in her education,” Pierce said.
Dismantling Title IX policies
As 27 states across the country now have laws banning transgender women from playing on women’s sports teams, advocates warn that these laws are helping to usher in policies that could help dismantle Title IX policies for women’s sports altogether.
Title IX is a civil rights law that bans sex discrimination in any education program or activity that gets federal money, including sports. Title IX requirements related to sports aim to ensure that women’s and men’s sports teams have equal participation, funding, and access in schools across the country.
The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank responsible for Project 2025, published a report calling to end the requirement that athletic participation be proportional to the number of boys and girls in a school’s student body. The report also calls to expand “feminine” intramural sports and other programs to count toward a school’s athletic participation while reducing Title IX regulation in school to give more flexibility to local entities on how to manage athletics.
The paper promotes rigid sex-based separation for athletic teams by arguing that there is an innate physical and competitive difference between men and women. Throughout the paper, the organization reinforces gender stereotypes between men and women, describing activities like dance, yoga, and ballet to be women’s “natural preferences” and centering characteristics like gentleness and motherhood to their physical activities.
Shannon Minter, the legal director of the National Center of LGBTQ Rights, said the report shows that laws that ban transgender athletes from participating in sports are helping to usher in a “direct attack” on women’s sports and rights as a whole.
“The same people who are aggressively seeking to exclude transgender people from sports are doing that just as a vehicle to go back to some very archaic beliefs,” Minter said. “They’re trying to push women into traditionally stereotypical feminine roles and activities and interests, whether that fits what they want to do or not.”
Minter said these transgender athlete bans are a “distraction” to a larger issue.
“That’s part of the tragedy. … The way the transgender people are being politically used by groups that want to turn back the clock for women is really distressing, Minter said. “And it has no real connection to any reality about transgender people in this country. It’s not really based on anything sensible or based on evidence or medical science. Things have taken a very negative turn for transgender people in sports. It’s a real shame, because it’s really hurt a lot of young people.”
