The 2024 Georgia legislative session was my sixth under the golden dome of the state Capitol, and it was one of the most difficult I have experienced as a civil rights activist and lobbyist – with one major exception.
During a session where nearly 20 vicious anti-LGBTQ+ bills were passed, we voted down every single hateful bill. I can’t stress enough how incredibly hard our community and our partners worked to achieve this outcome. I am so proud of the work we all did and I am grateful to be part of a community that will never give up on this fight.
For weeks, our team was on the ground, testifying and lobbying with partner organizations leading this fight, including Georgia Equality, TransParent, and the Human Rights Campaign. We accompanied parents, students, teachers, and activists from across the state who came together day after day to fight against inclusion policies like censorship, the exclusion of transgender and intersex youth, bathroom restrictions, bills forcing educators to out LGBTQ+ students, and more. They used their voices and collective power to push back against laws that allow discrimination based on a person’s immutable characteristics or beliefs.
House Bill 1170, which restricts medical care for transgender youth, and HB 1104, which bans transgender students from participating in school sports, were the two bills that advanced the furthest during the session. The changes to HB 1104 were incredibly damaging, as the original bill was a great bipartisan effort to prevent suicides among young athletes. By the time the Senate was done with its changes, it was full of hateful bans and restrictions on gender-affirming care and attacks on public libraries with programs deemed supportive of LGBTQ+ students.
It was a disappointing development.
However, for decades, groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, American College of Pediatricians, Family Research Council, and more recently smaller organizations that are part of this network, including the Frontline Policy Council, have used pseudoscience to justify harmful anti-LGBTQ+ policies. Bills like HB 1170 and HB 1104 are the result of their advocacy at the state and national levels. We have seen copycat bills across the country with very similar language based on model legislation from these organizations.
Despite their earlier victories, the end of the session provided plenty of cause for celebration for LGBTQ+ Georgians and their allies.
On the last day of the session, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project published an article raising ethical questions about the most prominent anti-LGBTQ+ hate group operating in our state: Frontline Policy Council. Their reporting provided additional cover for House leadership, which was unwilling to vote on the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. The article was widely shared. We spent the day speaking to legislators with other advocates, parents, and students. Those legislators who were undecided stuck with it.
Dozens of advocates stayed with us at the Capitol until midnight—the deadline by which the legislation had to arrive on the governor’s desk for signature or veto. We held our breath as we saw the deadline approaching for the House to approve the Senate’s amendments to HB 1170 and HB 1104.
We were relieved that the Georgia House of Representatives never brought these two heinous bills to a vote, meaning they cannot become law in 2024. These measures are effectively dead until the next legislative session in 2025 – if someone else decides to reintroduce the bill.
The relief and joy everyone felt was contagious. Racial and social justice doesn’t always win in the Deep South – a part of our country scarred by gerrymandering and the legacy of Jim Crow laws. We often feel like we have to fight the hardest battles. Often, all we can do is mitigate the potential damage and hope for the best. Sometimes we have to rely on legal organizations like the SPLC legal team to fight for justice in the courts.
But we are here every day, doing our best. We know we are strongest when we stand together with allies and the people who are directly affected by such laws.
And in 2024 we won.
Now we must prepare – together with our partners and supporters – for the next legislative period.
We will be ready. We must never give up this fight.
Isabel Otero is the policy director for the SPLC and the SPLC Action Fund in Georgia.
Image above: (Source: SPLC)
