SUMMARY: The annual YMCA Critz Tybee Run Fest kicks off today and tomorrow on Tybee Island, featuring five races, including a 5k, 10k, half marathon, 2.8-mile beach run, and a one-mile run. The event aims to attract 1,200 participants, with proceeds benefiting local youth programs. Organizers highlight the positive impact on Tybee Island businesses during the low season. The YMCA of Coastal Georgia hosts the event for the third year, offering a VIP experience for runners with local treats and drinks. Registration is open, and race packet pick-up begins this afternoon. Parking is metered, and course maps are available online.

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Kemp-backed lawsuit overhaul seeks to limit large verdicts, but without explicit damages caps

by Maya Homan, Georgia Recorder
January 31, 2025

After weeks of suspense, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s proposal to overhaul Georgia’s legal landscape is finally here.

At a jam-packed press conference Thursday, Kemp gathered state lawmakers and business leaders at Georgia’s state Capitol to introduce policies he says are aimed at reducing insurance prices for businesses and everyday consumers alike.

“If your neighborhood doesn’t have a grocery store, if your hometown and surrounding counties don’t have an OB/GYN, if the local family-owned restaurant is forced to raise prices again and again or go out of business altogether, if the child care facility your son or daughter attends has to close its doors, if your car insurance premium goes up just like it did last year, those are real jobs potentially gone forever,” Kemp said. “Those are real costs that every single Georgian has to pay.”

Proponents of overhauling Georgia’s legal landscape, sometimes referred to as “tort reform,” say large jury awards are driving up insurance costs across the state. They often cite a 2024 American Tort Reform Foundation ranking that listed Georgia as one of the top five “judicial hellholes” in the country. A recent report from Insurance Commissioner John King echoed those findings, arguing that an increase in claims and large jury verdicts was resulting in higher insurance rates for Georgia businesses.

Kemp has touted the issue as his key priority for the 2025 legislative session, threatening to reconvene the state legislature for a special session if his proposed overhauls do not pass by the end of the session in early April. However, until now he had not released any specific policy proposals, garnering criticism from Democrats.

At Thursday’s press conference, Kemp outlined a nine-pronged approach aimed at limiting lawsuit awards, divided into two pieces of legislation. Senate Bill 68, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem John F. Kennedy, a Macon Republican, would tackle the majority of Kemp’s plans, including measures that would limit owners’ liability for injuries that occur on their property, prevent plaintiffs’ lawyers from suggesting a monetary value to compensate for pain and suffering, and enable trials to be bifurcated, or split into multiple stages so that juries can determine liability and damages separately.

Senate Bill 69, also authored by Kennedy, would increase regulations on third-party sources of funding for lawsuits, requiring any third-party entities to be registered with the Department of Banking and Finance and limiting their ability to exert influence over the plaintiffs’ legal decisions, such as when and how plaintiffs settle a case. It also prevents foreign governments and adversaries from becoming litigation financiers.

The two bills notably exclude any explicit caps on the damages that can be awarded to plaintiffs who file lawsuits. A previous legislative attempt to limit jury payouts passed in 2005 but was struck down by the Georgia Supreme Court five years later.

However, the legislation is still likely to face pushback from both Democrats and trial lawyers, who argue that factors other than jury awards may be driving rising insurance premiums.

“There are very real issues that Georgians face when it comes to insurance,” said Rep. Tanya Miller, an Atlanta Democrat. “We hear about them all the time: Denied claims, canceled policies, rising premiums. We can and should do something about these issues.

“The truth is, we’re just being asked to take the insurance industry’s word for it that so-called ‘frivolous lawsuits’ drive up rates. There is no transparency in how they set their rates, and they are not required to provide proof that restricting laws will lower premiums,” she added.

Proponents of the proposed changes, including the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups, argue they will create more balance between plaintiffs and defendants in Georgia’s court system, establishing an environment that would entice more insurance companies to provide coverage throughout the state. Kyle Wingfield, the president and CEO of the conservative-leaning Georgia Public Policy Foundation, echoed those sentiments.

“It genuinely seems that they’re not trying to just clamp down on lawsuits generally,” Wingfield said. “They’re trying to address some very specific problems with civil cases and I think bring it back into balance.”

But members of the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association (GTLA) were skeptical of the policy proposals, with former state Rep. Matthew Wilson, an Atlanta-based personal injury lawyer and member of the GTLA’s executive committee calling efforts to limit damages awarded for medical bills “clear non-starters.”

“The bottom line is that it shifts the costs of the wrongdoing from the bad actors who did the wrongdoing to the victims — the innocent parties — who just so happen to have insurance,” he said. 

Wilson also argued that Kemp’s office had not taken trial lawyers’ views into account during its data collection process.

“That trial lawyers and the plaintiffs’ bar, who represent Georgia consumers, were the one stakeholder in this issue that were shut out from that process,” Wilson said. “But that notwithstanding, we have been working with the governor’s team to provide data to show why this effort is misguided and why we need to be focused on the insurance companies, because they are the ones that are raising the premiums.”

Advocates on both sides of the issue say they will need time to digest the bills before taking any firm stances. But efforts to limit third-party lawsuit financing, in particular, may be an area in which disparate groups can find some common ground. Third-party entities seeking to profit off of personal injury settlements have come under scrutiny nationwide, with states like Indiana, Louisiana and West Virginia all opting to pass new transparency regulations.

For desperate plaintiffs, financing offers from third-party entities can be enticing, Atlanta-based attorney and political analyst Madeline Summerville said.

“These third-party lenders come along and say, ‘hey, we’ll give you the money that you need for now,’ but then they end up doubling it by the end, and so it’s very predatory in a lot of ways,” Summerville said. “I think you would get bipartisan support on those kinds of measures for sure.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

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Transgender sports ban advances out of Georgia Senate committee; gender-affirming care under fire

by Ross Williams and Jill Nolin, Georgia Recorder
January 30, 2025

State lawmakers have advanced a bill expanding Georgia’s ban on transgender athletes in girls’ sports out of committee, and other Senate bills targeting gender-affirming care, including for adults, are already in the queue.

The Senate Education and Youth Committee passed a long-expected bill that aims to prevent transgender girls from playing school sports on girls’ teams at every grade level as well as college.

The law bans boys from playing on teams designated for girls, though girls can play on teams designated for boys if there is no equivalent girls’ team. Schools would still be able to offer co-ed sports to any student. Colleges would also fall under the bill, and schools that buck the bill could lose state funding.

The law would apply to private schools that play against public schools. The bill also sets up requirements for separate male and female restrooms and locker rooms and allows a complaint process.

The bill’s sponsor, Cumming Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal, said it will ensure a level playing field for female athletes.

“We essentially created a category for women that by definition excludes male participation,” he said. “Because if you have a sport open to members of both sexes, what we know… is it will be dominated by men, by males. That is also indisputable by a lot of pieces of data that we have seen.”

Four college swimmers participated virtually to speak on behalf of the bill. The women are not from Georgia, but lost to transgender athlete Lia Thomas at a competition at Georgia Tech in 2022. The four also testified that they were made to share a locker room with Thomas, which they said made them highly uncomfortable.

“We were never asked. We were never given a choice or another option,” said swimmer Kaitlynn Wheeler. “We were just expected to be OK with it, to shove down our discomfort, our embarrassment, our fear, because standing up for ourselves would mean being labeled as intolerant or hateful or bigoted. This is the future awaiting your daughters, if you do nothing.”

The NCAA changed its eligibility rules after complaints mounted over Thomas’ victories.

But 22-year-old college cheerleader Bella Bautista said transgender athletes often don’t have an advantage and need to work as hard as cisgender athletes.

“I was never allowed to be on the cheer team at my high school because I wasn’t white enough and I wasn’t womanly enough and I didn’t look good in the uniform, quote, unquote,” Bautista said. “When I got to college, the opportunity opened up for me, and I worked so hard to be able to be on that team. As transgender athletes, we get beat every single day by cisgender athletes, 99% of the time we’re losing, but that is a part of being an athlete. You’re not always going to win everything.”

Atlanta Democratic Sen. RaShaun Kemp warned the bill could invite new lawsuits against the state, either from transgender girls who will not be allowed to play or from cisgender girls who are incorrectly challenged as transgender because of their physical characteristics.

Kemp proposed an amendment to the bill spelling out that judgements on a student’s ability to play will not be based on “visual inspection of such student’s exterior sex organs,” which the committee unanimously approved.

Other Democrats on the committee described the bill as a sign of twisted priorities.

“People don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to dig a dagger and turn a knife and use people for political advantage versus actually trying to do the people’s business,” said Atlanta Democratic Sen. Elena Parent.

Dawson Democratic Sen. Freddie Powell Sims said she also didn’t see the point of the bill.

“I’m really confused because now, right now, as we debate this issue, there are 1,735,585 students in Georgia’s public school system,” she said. “Most of them are seriously suffering from and struggling through learning loss, as we sit here and debate who’s faster, who’s stronger, who’s bigger, who’s whatever. Our literacy rates in the state of Georgia are some of the worst in the southeastern region of the country, of the whole United States of America. Yet and still, we sit here and spend hours and hours debating this issue. What are we doing, Mr. Chairman?”

Sims went on to vote for the bill anyway, declining to comment when asked about her vote after the hearing.

Ban on state-funded treatments

Sims also declined to comment on another proposal to cut off gender-affirming care, such as hormone therapy or gender reassignment surgery, for state workers, local educators and others on the state health insurance plan that is breaking new ground in the ongoing culture wars in Georgia.

She and fellow Democratic Sen. Ed Harbison of Columbus joined more than two dozen Senate Republicans in sponsoring that bill, filed by Vidalia Republican state Sen. Blake Tillery this week.

If it passes, it would prohibit coverage for gender-affirming care under the state’s insurance plan or through state-funded providers.

Parent said Tillery’s bill represents a shift in target.

Until now, the transgender-related health care measures debated over the last couple years in Georgia have focused on minors, including another bill filed this week that would revive a controversial plan to ban puberty blockers for minors

“So now they’re really invading into adult medical decisions,” Parent said.

The state started to provide gender-affirming care after public workers, including a state employee, a Bibb County educator and another state staffer whose young adult child was enrolled in the state plan, filed a lawsuit that was ultimately settled in late 2023. The state reportedly paid out $365,000 as part of the settlement, according to commentary included in the bill.

The settlement was “entered into by the state health benefit plan and the Attorney General without prior notice to or approval by the General Assembly,” the bill says.

“It should not fall on the state of Georgia and its taxpayers to fund transgender surgeries,” Tillery said in a statement.

Tillery’s bill was filed as President Donald Trump has issued a series of gender-related executive orders on the federal level, including one banning openly transgender people from serving in the armed forces and another declaring that the federal government will only recognize two sexes, male and female, ending “gender ideology extremism.”

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.

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