After working for Georgia Southern University for nearly a decade, an employee was fired last summer for raising concerns about the university’s unwillingness to apply for a grant to fund gender-affirming care.
This week, the University of Georgia Board of Regents and the Statesboro-based campus agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a wrongful termination suit by Gemma Skuraton that illustrates the tensions at state institutions between advocates of diversity and changing state laws regarding Civil Rights.
“This was a young woman who needed someone to fight on her behalf. She deserved a champion,” said Artur Davis from HKM Employment Attorneys, who represented Skuraton in the suit, which cited First Amendment violations.
Skuraton was hired as a health promotion coordinator at Georgia Southern in 2016, primarily on the university’s Armstrong campus, and was promoted to Director of Student Wellness and Health Promotion in 2020. She previously served as interim board president of Mary’s Place, a rape crisis center in Savannah, and president of the Georgia Society for Public Health Education.
Part of Skuraton’s campus job was engaging with LGBTQ groups and students. That got tougher, however, after Georgia’s Republican-led legislature and politicians passed laws that targeted members of the state’s queer and trans communities, according to the lawsuit.
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