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The University System of Georgia Board of Regents is asking two organizations that govern collegiate sports to ban transgender women from participating in women’s sports.

Tuesday’s unanimous vote came two years after the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) voted to require students to participate in high school sports based on their gender at birth.

The controversy over transgender women taking part in women’s sports erupted during the 2022 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships held at Georgia Tech.

Lia Thomas of the University of Pennsylvania, who had posted respectable but not spectacular times while swimming for the men’s team, emerged into the national spotlight while transitioning to female through hormone replacement therapy, winning the 500-meter freestyle event.

Five former elite-level college women swimmers who took part in those championships testified before a state Senate committee in August that being forced to compete against Thomas was unfair. They also said they were uncomfortable having to share a locker room with Thomas.

“Biologically female student-athletes could be put at a competitive disadvantage when student-athletes who are biologically male or who have undergone masculinizing hormone therapy compete in female athletic competitions,” read the second paragraph of the resolution the Board of Regents adopted Tuesday.

The resolution urges both the NCAA and the National Junior College Athletic Association to make their policies toward transgender women in sports consistent with the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which already bans transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

The issue was among the most controversial the General Assembly took up in 2022. Lawmakers considered a bill to ban transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identity rather than their gender at birth.

However, the legislature stopped short of an outright ban, voting instead to leave it up to the GHSA’s executive committee, which approved a ban that spring.

Now, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who presides over the Georgia Senate, is vowing to revisit transgender women in sports during the 2025 legislative session with a bill that would ban them from participating in sports at Georgia’s public colleges.

“I want to thank the Board of Regents for taking action on an issue I have stressed as a priority and the Senate has led on in Georgia – protecting women’s sports,” Jones said following Tuesday’s vote. “The work female athletes put into competing should be protected at all cost, no matter the age. This action brings us one step closer toward achieving that ultimate goal.”

During the 2022 debate in the General Assembly, legislative Democrats, transgender students and their parents argued that banning transgender girls from participating in girls’ high school sports would discriminate against students who already suffer from prejudice. They cited above-average suicide rates among transgender teens.