by Ross Williams and Jill Nolin, Georgia Recorder
April 2, 2025

With only a few more days left to pass legislation, the state Legislature advanced two controversial Senate bills that would add new restrictions to gender affirming care.

State health plan ban gets inmate addition

Vidalia Republican Sen. Blake Tillery’s Senate Bill 39 passed through a House committee on a party line vote with a new amendment.

The original version of the bill, which had already passed the committee, barred transgender state employees or their dependents from receiving care on the state health insurance plan. The version that passed the House Health Committee Tuesday also specifically prohibits people in state correctional institutions from getting gender care.

There are currently about five people who are incarcerated in Georgia who receive this care, according to Cataula Republican Sen. Randy Robertson.

Norcross Democratic Rep. Marvin Lim argued that removing transgender health care from the plan would violate the law.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in February that discrimination lawsuits and other complaints involving transgender people had cost taxpayers at least $4.1 million since 2015, including $2.1 million to settle claims and another $2 million in legal costs. Those numbers include $365,000 paid out in a 2023 settlement in which the state agreed to provide coverage for gender-affirming care and not to restrict it again.

“We feel very strongly that it would be an unconstitutional impairment of contracts to undo those settlements, let alone just an unconstitutional move to say that this wouldn’t violate Title VII, that this wouldn’t violate the equal protection clause,” he said.

Lim was referring to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employers from discriminating based on an employee’s sex, which includes whether they are transgender, and the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment.

Dawsonville Republican Rep. Brent Cox, who is sponsoring the bill in the Senate, indicated that the law will be a message to the state judicial branch that the Legislature wants it to be legal to ban transgender health care.

“My belief is that it clears up for the judicial branch to be able to work within these guidelines on how they’re going to rule and move forward,” he said.

Lim said he was not convinced.

“It is not enough for us to say this is our policy,” he said. “This is a violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal statutory law on anti-discrimination. So we can pass whatever law we want at the state level and say ‘the attorney general can’t do this, the Department of Community Health can’t do this.’ But the argument has always been that this is violating higher law, the federal law, and specifically the U.S. Constitution.”

Democrats on the committee also argued the language in the bill could eliminate mental health treatments for transgender people, which Cox said was a misinterpretation.

The bill will need to pass through both chambers before Friday’s final deadline if it is to become law.

Standalone ban on jail treatment

Around the same time the House Health Committee passed SB 39, the House Public and Community Health took up Robertson’s Senate Bill 185, which also bans gender-affirming care for inmates but does not affect state employees.

Robertson’s bill passed out of the committee with a voice vote, teeing it for a potential final vote by the Legislature’s April 4 adjournment. Speaking to a reporter in the hallway after the committee approved his bill, Robertson said he hadn’t had time to see the latest revision on SB 39, but he supports Tillery’s state health plan ban and would likely be happy if either bill passed.

Republican supporters make the case that taxpayer money should not go toward gender-affirming care in state prisons.

“I understand individuals get upset when I say this, but I do mean it with all compassion: elective surgeries cannot be a part of our cost in the Georgia Department of Corrections,” Robertson said.

Opponents of the bill counter that gender-affirming care encompasses more than surgeries, is far from elective and can be necessary for a person’s wellbeing. Several speakers, including two attorneys with civil rights organizations, argued Tuesday that the measure is unconstitutional.

“If adopted, Senate Bill 185 would impose blanket bans on the provision of gender-affirming care to incarcerated people with gender dysphoria, regardless of needs,” said Emily C. R. Early with the Center for Constitutional Rights. “These blanket bans have repeatedly been found unconstitutional because they show deliberate indifference to the needs of incarcerated people.”

“This Senate bill puts lives at risk, and in so doing, would bring constitutional challenges,” she added.

Robertson was dismissive of those potential challenges to the state.

“We have the five individuals who are seeking the care, and then we have the lawsuits, and if you look at that, one of the failures within our system right now is the fact we do not have a policy against it,” Robertson said.

Tuesday’s debate also veered into discussion about the origin of the slate of bills targeting transgender Georgians this year. There are at least five bills gaining traction, and lawmakers have spent hours deliberating on them and hearing public input on them, and they are spending the final days of the session trying to finalize them.

Rep. Michelle Au, a Johns Creek Democrat, said House Republican colleagues have told her that she should support Robertson’s bill because the issue of inmates receiving gender-affirming care is why former Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election last year.

A leading Senate Democrat representing an Atlanta district caused an uproar last month when she joined three other Democrats who voted for Robertson’s bill.

“That comment has been made to me several times, and I just have to put on the record that I really resent a subset of our patient population being used in this way for clearly political reasons, and I really wish that you would not put your voice behind this bill,” Au said to Robertson.

Robertson said politics wasn’t the motivation for him. But Rep. Scott Hilton, a Peachtree Corners Republican, acknowledged the influence of the 2024 election.

“Politics does inform policy as much as that politics reflect what our communities want,” Hilton said. “And I think if anything this last cycle, we learned that this was an 80/20 issue, not just in Georgia, but frankly America, and that folks were flabbergasted to learn that a small segment of our population opposed policies like this.”

But Bentley Hudgins, state director with the Human Rights Campaign, argued that exit polling showed that transgender issues ranked low on the list of voter priorities.

“We have seen time and time again in history where powerful people have used public opinion to excuse crimes against humanity,” Hudgins said.

“I do want to challenge that notion that just because, even if it were true that the majority of people think that this is a popular issue, it doesn’t give you the right to pass it.”

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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SUMMARY: In 2023, South Carolina reported a significant decrease in drug overdose deaths, marking the first drop in over a decade. The total fell to 2,157 deaths, a 6.1% reduction from 2022. While Beaufort County saw a decline, Jasper and Colleton Counties experienced increases. Dr. Edward Simmer, interim DPH director, emphasized the importance of local collaboration in addressing the overdose crisis, which continues to be heavily influenced by fentanyl. The state provides resources, including free Opioid Overdose Safety Kits and naloxone, to help combat this issue. Community outreach and federal funding have bolstered prevention and recovery efforts.

Read the full article

The post Overdose deaths down in SC for first time in 11 years appeared first on www.wsav.com

by Jacob Fischler, Georgia Recorder
April 1, 2025

A coalition of Democratic state officials sued the Trump administration Tuesday over plans to cut more than $11 billion in grants by the Department of Health and Human Services, on the same day thousands of HHS workers reportedly found they’d been swept up in a mass layoff.

In Washington, the Republican chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asking him to appear before the panel and discuss his plans for the massive agency.

The federal suit, signed by 22 attorneys general and two Democratic governors, alleges Kennedy revoked, without warning, billions in grant funding appropriated by Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic, starting last week. That led to states scrambling to adjust plans for vaccination efforts, infectious disease prevention, mental health programs and more.

The sudden and chaotic rollout of the grant cuts foreshadowed a scene at HHS offices, including at big campuses in Maryland, on Tuesday morning. Termination notices to laid-off workers were reportedly emailed early Tuesday, but many workers did not see them before arriving at the office and finding out they’d lost their jobs when their key cards did not work.

Few specifics

Both the mass layoffs and the grant funding cuts challenged in the lawsuit stem from Kennedy’s March 27 announcement that the department would be “realigning,” by shuttering several offices and cutting 10,000 workers.

It was unclear Tuesday exactly what offices or employees were affected.

An HHS spokesperson responded to a request for comment by referring States Newsroom to Kennedy’s announcement, a press release and an accompanying fact sheet from March 27.

None provided a detailed breakdown but laid out plans to eliminate 3,500 full-time positions at the Food and Drug Administration, 2,400 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,200 staff at the National Institutes of Health and 300 workers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up inquiry requesting more details of the positions eliminated and other clarifications.

Efficiency doubted

In a written statement, Andrés Arguello, a policy fellow at Groundwork Collective, a think tank focused on economic equity, said the cuts would have “the exact opposite” effect of the administration’s stated goal of government efficiency.

“Gutting 10,000 public servants means higher costs, longer wait times, and fewer services for families already struggling with the rising cost of living,” Arguello, an HHS deputy secretary under former President Joe Biden, wrote. “Entire offices that support child care, energy assistance, and mental health treatment are being dismantled, leaving working families with fewer options and bigger bills. This isn’t streamlining—it’s abandonment, and the price will be paid by the sick, the vulnerable, and the poor.”

The lack of communication led to confusion among advocates and state and local health workers about the impacts of the staff cuts and cast doubt about the administration’s goals, speakers on a Tuesday press call said.

“There are so many more questions than answers right now,” Sharon Gilmartin, the executive director of Safe States Alliance, an anti-violence advocacy group, said. “They clearly are eliminating whole divisions and branches, which doesn’t speak to bureaucratic streamlining. It speaks to moving forward an agenda, which has not been elucidated for the public health community, it’s not been elucidated for the public.”

While specific consequences of the cuts were not yet known, Gilmartin and others said they would be felt at the state and local level.

“I think what we do know is that … when we’re cutting these positions at the federal level, we are cutting work in states and communities,” Gilmartin said.

Pain in the states

The lawsuit from Democratic officials is full of details about the impacts of the loss of federal funding on state programs.

The suit was brought in Rhode Island federal court by the attorneys general of Colorado, Rhode Island, California, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin and Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

HHS revoked “more than half a billion dollars” of grants from Pennsylvania, the Democratic officials said, affecting more than 150 state employees and contracted staff. The grants funded work “to respond to and mitigate the spread of infectious disease across the Commonwealth” and mental health and substance abuse programs.

In Nevada, “HHS abruptly terminated at least six grants” that had funded epidemiology and lab capacity, immunization access and mental health services, according to the suit.

“These terminations led Nevada to immediately terminate 48 state employees and to order contractors working under these awards to immediately cease all activity,” the complaint reads. “The loss of funding will have substantial impacts on public health in Nevada.”

The cutoff of $13 million in unobligated grants for local communities in Minnesota will mean the shuttering of clinics to provide vaccines for COVID-19, measles, mumps, rubella, influenza and other diseases, the suit said.

“One local public health agency reported that it held 21 childhood vaccination clinics and provided approximately 1,400 vaccinations to children in 2024,” a paragraph in the complaint about Minnesota local vaccine clinics said. “It also held 87 general vaccination clinics in 2024. As a result of the termination of the … funds, it has immediately ceased all vaccination clinics for 2025.”

The grant terminations also affected state plans already in the works.

Rhode Island had received an extension from HHS for a grant with $13 million unspent, but that money was revoked last week.

“Accordingly, the state public health department developed a workplan for its immunization program that included an April 2025 vaccination clinic for seniors, provided salaries for highly trained technicians to ensure that vaccine doses are stored and refrigerated correctly to prevent waste of vaccines purchased with other tax-payer dollars, planned computer system upgrades, and covered printing costs for communications about vaccine campaigns,” the suit said.

Senators want RFK Jr. on the Hill

Democrats on Capitol Hill issued a slew of statements opposing the cuts and warning of their effects.

Republicans were more deferential to the administration, asking for patience as details of the cuts are revealed.

But the letter from the top members of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also brought both sides together to write Kennedy asking him to testify before the committee to make those explanations plain.

“The hearing will discuss your proposed reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services,” the letter from Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders said.

In a written statement, Cassidy said the hearing would be an opportunity for Kennedy to inform the public about the reorganization.

“The news coverage on the HHS reorg is being set by anonymous sources and opponents are setting the perceptions,” Cassidy said in a written statement. “In the confirmation process, RFK committed to coming before the committee on a quarterly basis. This will be a good opportunity for him to set the record straight and speak to the goals, structure and benefits of the proposed reorganization.”

Last updated 6:40 p.m., Apr. 1, 2025

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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