State Senate panel backs bill tackling culture war issues

Support for so-called ‘Frankenbill’ is split across party lines.

Lt. Gov. Burt Jones is backing a last-minute education “Frankenbill” piecing together various red-meat Republican measures that failed to advance earlier in the session.

The hijacking of legislation and tacking on several unrelated measures, sometimes called a “Frankenbill,” typically is done toward the end of a legislative session when lawmakers try to revive bills that didn’t gain traction by putting them into a bill that has already passed one chamber. It also allows bills to skip the committee process of the other chamber.

A Senate panel amended four Republican-backed bills — such as banning transgender athletes from playing sports, using restrooms that align with their gender identity and preventing sex education in schools before the sixth grade — into House Bill 1104, originally a measure a first-term Democrat sponsored to provide mental health and suicide prevention resources to student-athletes.

Senate Education and Youth Chairman Clint Dixon, a Buford Republican, said Jones “strongly supported” the new bill.

Shortly after the bill passed, Jones released a news release praising specifically the portion addressing transgender children.

“Women’s sports are under attack by a radical ideology that creates an unsafe and uneven playing field,” Jones said. “I am proud to stand up against this nonsense and protect the integrity of women’s sports.”

Jones is expected to run for governor when his term is up in 2026.

The committee voted 4-3, with Democrats opposing the bill.

The bill’s original sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Omari Crawford of Decatur, said he was informed that there would be additions to it but that he didn’t have a chance to fully read them before the hearing.

Crawford initially set out to require athletic associations, which include public and private schools alike, to share information about suicide prevention and mental health risks that can come from being a student-athlete.

However, in addition to filling his bill with hot-button, GOP-backed issues, Republicans on the committee removed from HB 1104 all mentions of mental health education and the requirement for private schools to participate.

Dixon began the meeting by saying most of what was added to HB 1104 had already been vetted and passed by the GOP-controlled committee.

But state Sen. Sonya Halpern, a Democrat from Atlanta, said that even if this were true, they were the bills that drew a lot of opposition.

“I wanted to just first acknowledge that Rep. Crawford’s bill is now filled with a bunch of bills that, as they’ve been vetted through this committee, have been some of the more contentious kind of conversations that we’ve had over the course of this biennium,” Halpern said.

The rewritten HB 1104 adds four sections to the bill. First, it would require schools to inform parents of the ability to receive emails about every book their child borrows from a school library. Supporters say the goal is to stop children from reading books with sexually explicit scenes or ones discussing gender identity.

In addition, HB 1104 would ban schools from teaching sex education to students before they are in sixth grade. It also would require parents to “opt in” if they wanted their child to receive the education at all.

The revamped bill would also ban transgender students from using bathrooms or locker rooms or play on teams that align with their gender identity.

Republicans effectively banned transgender girls from sports last year when they encouraged the Georgia High School Association to change its policy.

Jen Slipakoff, a Cobb County resident and mother of a teenage transgender girl, said this was the second time within a week that Republican lawmakers have taken a bill with wide support and turned it into something “completely despicable.”

She referenced Nex Benedict, the 16-year-old, nonbinary Oklahoma student who was beaten in a bathroom by three girls who had previously mocked Benedict’s clothing. Benedict committed suicide the next day.

“Having to use a restroom that does not align with your gender identity is incredibly dangerous,” Slipakoff said.

“And here we are completely altering a bill that is about suicide prevention and adding something that could potentially lead to someone taking their own life — which we just saw happen (in Oklahoma).”