What Other States Have Already Done—and Why Georgia Can Too

Women’s restrooms, public accommodations, and the cost of legislative silence

A month ago, I asked a simple question: Do women have a right to single-sex public spaces in Georgia—or don’t they? Since then, Georgia has provided an answer. Not in statute. Not in policy. But in its consequences for real people.

Recently, DeKalb County quietly terminated a veteran police officer for doing what many parents assume is still permitted: responding to a mother’s complaint about a biological male using the women’s restroom at a public library while women and children were present.

The officer did not act on a whim. According to internal records, he intervened only after a mother with two children complained to library security. The library, for its part, had no sex-based restroom policy to enforce—only a local ordinance protecting “gender identity.” With no statewide public-accommodations law to provide clarity, the burden fell on an individual officer to navigate a conflict the legislature has refused to resolve.

The result was predictable. The officer was fired. The woman who complained disappeared from the story. And the public was told—once again—that the real problem was enforcement itself.

This is what policy avoidance looks like in practice.

When Lawmakers Decline to Draw Lines, Someone Else Pays

Georgia lawmakers have not been silent on sex-based rights altogether. In recent sessions, the General Assembly enacted the Riley Gaines Act to protect girls’ sports, affirming that biological sex still matters where fairness and safety are concerned.

That clarity, however, stops at the gym door.

Outside of schools, Georgia has no statewide public-accommodations statute affirming sex-based spaces such as restrooms, changing rooms, or shelters. Instead, the state relies on a patchwork of local ordinances layered over evolving federal interpretations—many of which collapse sex into identity without legislative debate.

In DeKalb County, that meant a library policy allowing patrons to use whichever restroom “aligns with their gender identity.” When a mother objected, there was no policy protecting her concern—only a process for disciplining the person who responded to it.

Other States Have Already Acted—Carefully and Lawfully

What makes this avoidance harder to justify is that it is not unprecedented. Other states have enacted legislation clarifying sex-based access to public facilities—particularly restrooms and changing areas—often through careful drafting that distinguishes sex from identity while allowing reasonable accommodations where appropriate.

States such as Florida and Oklahoma have enacted statutes that provide sex-based clarity for public facilities, particularly in government-owned or government-operated buildings, while others have extended similar protections at least to educational and institutional settings. These laws vary in scope, but they demonstrate that legislatures can act without resorting to criminalization or ambiguity.

While structured differently, they share several key features:

• They define sex as biological sex for purposes of facility access and institutional policy.

• They distinguish sex from identity—without criminalizing expression or presence in public life.

• They allow reasonable alternatives, like single-user or family facilities, without erasing sex-based boundaries.

• They give institutions and public employees clear guidance, so conflicts don’t land on individual workers.

In other words, they do exactly what legislatures are meant to do: set rules in advance, rather than leaving individuals to guess under pressure.

The claim that such clarity is impossible—or inherently discriminatory—is contradicted by the fact that multiple states have already implemented it.

Georgia can too.

Importantly, these statutes do not rely on criminalization or sweeping penalties. Enforcement is typically administrative, directed at institutions rather than individuals, and grounded in statutory definitions and agency guidance rather than punitive sanctions. The purpose is predictability, not punishment—so conflicts are resolved by policy, not by whoever happens to be on duty that day. Framing this clarity as “criminalization” obscures the real problem: it is the absence of law that turns routine boundary-setting into crisis.

This is where the conversation usually goes sideways. What sex-based facility laws do not do is also worth stating. They do not criminalize identity, expression, or participation in public life. In states that have enacted such statutes, enforcement focuses on institutional compliance, not individual confrontation.

“Protecting Girls” Cannot End at the Playing Field

This month, Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor—now a candidate for governor—launched a “Girl Dads” coalition to protect fairness in girls’ sports. The language is familiar and, on its face, unobjectionable: girls deserve safety, opportunity, and common sense protections.

But if that principle is sincere, it cannot stop at athletics.

Girls do not shed their sex when they leave the field. They carry it into locker rooms, restrooms, libraries, parks, and public buildings. Parents do not stop worrying about boundaries once the game ends. And mothers do not stop calculating risk simply because a space is labeled “inclusive.”

Protecting girls “on and off the field” requires more than slogans. It requires laws that acknowledge reality across public life—not just where political consensus is easiest. That includes the public spaces girls use every day—not just the teams they play on.

The Cost of Clarity Deferred

The DeKalb library incident should not be understood as a departure from the norm. It is the logical outcome of a system that asks women to tolerate uncertainty, asks institutions to manage liability, and asks individual employees to absorb consequences when conflicts arise.

The officer lost his job. The concerns of the mother who complained were rendered invisible. And the state’s refusal to act remained untouched. This is what happens when lawmakers wait for courts, activists, or crises to force their hand—rather than governing. Clarity isn’t radical, cruel, or unprecedented. It’s the ordinary work of governance.

Georgia Still Has a Choice

A month ago, I argued that waiting for harm is not leadership. Since then, Georgia has been offered a case study in what waiting produces. The question now is whether lawmakers will continue to outsource responsibility—or finally acknowledge that women’s public spaces are not a niche issue, a local matter, or a problem best left unresolved.

Other states have shown it can be done. Georgia has already shown it can draw lines when it chooses to. What remains is the willingness to extend that clarity beyond sports—and into the spaces where women and girls live their daily lives.

The line is not radical, it is simply overdue.