The state of Georgia will pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former Georgia Southern University employee who was fired last year after opposing the rollback of LGBTQ-friendly policies and outreach initiatives.
Gemma Skuraton, Georgia Southern’s former director of student wellness and health promotion, sued the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia and Dr. Shay Little, the university’s vice president for student affairs, in her individual capacity in April.
Skuraton alleged that her firing violated her First Amendment and Title IX rights and constituted illegal retaliation for opposing sex-based discrimination, which she argued includes discrimination based on gender identity.
Georgia Southern hired Skuraton as a health promotion coordinator in 2016, assigning her primarily to its Armstrong Campus in Savannah. She was promoted to director of student wellness and health promotion in 2020.
At the time, Georgia Southern’s leadership championed LGBTQ outreach initiatives and tasked Skuraton with engaging with LGBTQ student groups and other members of the community.
Skuraton alleges that this changed during the 2024 presidential campaign, when university administrators attempted to move the school in a more conservative direction by scuttling its LGBTQ outreach efforts and adopting anti-LGBTQ policies.
The lawsuit notes that the university removed the Pride flag from the student counseling center, deleted postings promoting resources for LGBTQ students from its student services website, and took down posters advertising counseling and medical services for people with gender dysphoria.
After Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill on April 28, 2025, barring transgender college athletes from competing on teams matching their gender identity, Little informed Skuraton that the university had decided to reject a grant application she had previously endorsed to provide free chest binders to transgender students. The proposed program was unrelated to the transgender athlete ban.
Skuraton warned Little that denying the grant could be considered discriminatory under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally funded educational institutions.
Skuraton informed transgender students and allies of the decision but did not speak to the media. The students protested and contacted local media outlets, prompting Little to accuse Skuraton of instigating the protests. According to the lawsuit, Little also threatened to rescind a job offer made to a transgender graduate student who had helped Skuraton with the grant and publicly criticized the university on social media.
Less than a month later, in July 2025, Little abruptly fired Skuraton despite her “glowing” performance evaluations in 2023 and 2024.
Neither the Board of Regents nor Little admitted wrongdoing as part of the settlement.
Under the settlement, the Georgia Department of Administrative Services will pay $250,000, with a portion going to Skuraton as damages and the remainder covering attorneys’ fees and other legal expenses.
The Board of Regents also agreed to reclassify Skuraton’s termination as a voluntary resignation, remove her termination letter from her personnel file where permitted by law, and provide her with a neutral reference letter, according to CBS News.
Skuraton must permanently dismiss the lawsuit within five days of receiving the settlement payment.
“Gemma Skuraton lost a job but she kept her moral compass,” Artur Davis, one of Skuraton’s attorneys at HKM Employment Attorneys, LLP, said in a statement. “This result is a reminder that while political tides change, the Constitution and the federal legal protections for vulnerable students and their advocates are still standing. And those laws aren’t cheap; they exact a cost when they are violated.”
The University of Alabama System has removed sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression from the nondiscrimination policies of its three campuses.
According to AL.com, archived web pages show that the words were deleted last year from the Equal Opportunity Program statements for the University of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville.
No other four-year public universities in the state appear to have removed the words, according to AL.com's research.
A restaurant and bar in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, has been fined in two separate anti-transgender discrimination cases after a state commission found that it barred a trans woman from using the women's restroom and selectively scanned patrons' IDs in a way that targeted transgender people.
Last September, the Delaware Human and Civil Rights Commission levied a $2,000 fine against Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille over an April 2023 incident in which a transgender woman was denied entry.
An employee at a wastewater treatment plant in suburban Buffalo has filed a federal lawsuit alleging that he was discriminated against because he is gay.
Timothy Burns, who has worked full time at Grand Island's wastewater treatment plant since 2011, claims the harassment and discriminatory treatment began in 2020, according to Buffalo CBS affiliate WIVB.
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