The state of Georgia will pay $250,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by a former Georgia Southern University wellness director who says she was fired for refusing to go along with the school's rollback of LGBTQ programs and resources.
What the Lawsuit Alleged
Skuraton joined Georgia Southern in 2016 as a health promotion coordinator and was promoted to director of student wellness and health promotion in 2020, a period when university leadership actively championed LGBTQ outreach and had her build relationships with campus LGBTQ student groups. She says that changed around the 2024 presidential campaign, when administrators pushed the school toward a more conservative posture, pulling the Pride flag from the student counseling center and stripping LGBTQ resource listings and gender dysphoria counseling posters from campus and its website.
The breaking point came after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law in April 2025 barring transgender college athletes from competing on teams that match their gender identity. Dr. Shay Little, the university's vice president for student affairs, told Skuraton the school would reject a grant application she had endorsed to provide free chest binders to transgender students, even though the program had nothing to do with athletics. Skuraton warned that denying the grant could violate Title IX. When she told transgender students and allies about the decision, they protested and went to local media, and Little accused her of orchestrating the backlash, according to the lawsuit, which also claims Little threatened to pull a job offer from a transgender graduate student who had assisted with the grant. Skuraton was fired less than a month later, in July 2025, despite performance reviews in 2023 and 2024 that her attorneys described as glowing.
Gemma Skuraton lost a job but she kept her moral compass.
Artur Davis, HKM Employment Attorneys
The Settlement Terms
Under the deal, the Georgia Department of Administrative Services will pay $250,000, covering damages to Skuraton as well as attorneys' fees and other costs. The Board of Regents also agreed to reclassify her termination as a voluntary resignation, remove the termination letter from her personnel file where the law allows, and provide her a neutral reference letter. Skuraton must drop the lawsuit permanently within five days of receiving payment. Neither the Board of Regents nor Little admitted any wrongdoing, a standard feature of settlements that lets institutions close out costly litigation without a formal finding against them.
A Wider Rollback Across the University System
Skuraton's firing didn't happen in isolation. In the fall of 2023, the University System of Georgia conducted a systemwide review of training materials tied to its free-expression policy, and that November the Board of Regents approved updated nondiscrimination language that dropped explicit references to sexual orientation and gender identity. By April 2024, Georgia Southern had rapidly removed most LGBTQ signage, resources and programming from campus, ordering staff to take down Pride flags and canceling student drag events. Roughly 200 students and faculty staged a sit-in at the Russell Union that month protesting the end of the school's Safe Space training program.
Lambda Legal counsel Gregory Nevins has warned that stripping explicit LGBTQ protections from nondiscrimination policy leaves schools
Source: Metro Weekly
Cover photo: Dominik Gryzbon / Pexels
