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GHSA votes to require student athletes to play on teams according to sex on birth certificate

The move comes just days after Kemp signed a slew of controversial education bills.

ATLANTA — Transgender student athletes in Georgia cannot compete on sports teams matching their gender identity after a Georgia High School Association vote on Wednesday.

The GHSA voted "unanimously" to approve youth to compete according to the sex determined on their birth certificate, according to a Tweet from Governor Brian Kemp. 

The vote comes just days after the Georgia governor signed a slew of controversial education bills last week. One of the most contentious being House Bill 1084, which authorized the the athletic association to choose to ban trans kids in sports. It was a move Kemp said was in effort to "protect fairness." 

Senators previously voted to flatly ban transgender boys and girls from playing on the school sports teams matching their gender identity, but House Speaker David Ralston had blocked that measure. 

Instead, Georgia lawmakers placed the decision with the association in a last-minute move as the 2022 session came to a close.

At the time HB 1084 was announced, Democrats reacted angrily to the legislation, with some saying the bill doesn't protect trans youth. 

“This bill targets the most vulnerable Georgians, transgender youth," said Rep. Matthew Wilson, an openly gay Brookhaven Democrat who is running for insurance commissioner. "It sets us up not only to be on the wrong side of history and morality, but on the wrong end of litigation.”

The same bill also bans the teaching of concepts on race and was amended to set up an outside oversight committee over the Georgia High School Association. It does not explicitly give the association the power to ban from competition transgender girls who play for private schools. Though, a number of private schools are also members of the association.

In the Tweet, Kemp said he was "proud" of the outcome. 

GHSA issued a statement on the matter, saying they don't keep track of transgender athletes in sports.

"The policy has been that the GHSA accepts the gender determined by the local school which has been in place for 6 years," the statement reads. "The policy passed today returns to what the policy was previously which is that a student's sex is determined by the sex noted on the certificate of birth."

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