Yesterday, I published How Do You Know the Legislation Is Anti-LGBTQ Without Reading It? (6-min read on Medium).
Here's another example of what I'm saying.
Trans people won't be allowed to update their gender on Florida driver's licenses anymore.
It used to be, as CNN explains, that in Florida a trans person could "take a certified doctor’s note to the DMV and update their license."
But no more.
In a January 26, 2024 letter, "the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles has rescinded the policy that allowed transgender individuals to update the gender marker on their driver's licenses," Erin Reed tells us. Also, if you've already changed it, you might be charged with fraud. According to the letter, in the DMV's own words, “misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver license constitutes fraud under s. 322,212, F.S., and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties, including cancellation, suspension, or revocation of his or her driver license, e.g., s. 322.22. and 322.27, F.S."
What changed? And why?
Florida has been enacting anti-trans laws
Governor Ron DeSantis enacted "Don't Say Gay," initially (in 2022) for grades K–3 and then (in 2023) through grade 12.
Last year, as Erin Reed explains, Florida enacted "bans on transgender individuals using the bathroom of their gender identity" (effective July 1, 2023) and "laws targeting adult medical care" (signed May 2023 — see what I wrote about it too). Furthermore, as CNN explains, "a 2023 state statute does not list a doctor’s note as an approved document for a driver’s license application and only mentions gender once without providing a definition."
The January 26 letter from Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles says it seeks to make its policies “consistent with Florida Law,” specifically by issuing and maintaining identification cards that don't “frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws.”
In other words, because Florida over the past couple years has been heading in an anti-trans direction in a coordinated way, all state agencies must proceed in the anti-trans direction so that they can be "consistent" with each other. That's the reason. Not because trans people need to be controlled or punished. Just because we are being controlled and punished, the state will continue to do so, and when it has to explain why, now it's saying it's just maintaining "consistent" laws and policies.
"The existing [DMV] policy had been in place for years," Parker Molloy says, and with the Republican Party in control, Florida laws were recently "specifically rewritten for this very anti-trans purpose."
Yes, it's anti-trans. No, Molloy emphasizes, it's "not a coincidence."
"If you read the document from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, it explicitly talks about transgender people, going into detail about who this is targeting: people who feel that their 'internal sense of his or her gender role or identification' doesn’t match their sex at birth. It's specifically about trans people."
— CNN's Anti-Trans Bias Shines Through, Refuses to Update Transphobic Headline: Two CNN reporters cozy with the Florida GOP obscure the truth behind one of the more horrific anti-trans policies to be implemented in the country. Parker Molloy, The Present Age, February 2, 2024
Consequences for trans people? Molloy says: "In short, trans people in Florida who haven’t yet updated their driver’s licenses won’t be able to, and trans people who have already updated them are guilty of 'fraud' and are liable to have their licenses revoked, among other civil and criminal penalties."
Updates
"In a letter released Friday [Feb 2, 2024], every member of Florida's Democratic congressional delegation urged the Biden administration to use his powers to block Florida's driver's license gender marker ban for transgender individuals using the federal Real ID act. This notable step marks the first time an entire state's Democratic congressional delegation has requested the administration intervene to prevent discrimination within the state against transgender individuals." This responds to Florida's announcements that "it would cease allowing changes to driver's license gender markers, asserting that any transgender person 'misrepresenting' their gender on their license could be guilty of criminal fraud," and there's a bill that "seeks to ban driver's license gender marker changes and would mandate health insurance coverage for conversion therapy." It seems as though "using the Real ID Act to block Florida's anti-trans driver's license policy" is something Biden could do, considering that there have been "over 1,000 bills targeting the transgender community have been filed since he took office." There's a federal requirement for states to put "gender" on a drivers license, so perhaps Biden could try "initiating a rulemaking process or declaring Florida out of compliance."
(Erin Reed, Feb 3, 2024)Last spring, I wrote My Last Time in a Swimming Pool in Florida. I took a photo of the swimming pool to remember it. I can't go there anymore.
See this article too: Florida is such a nasty state: The latest jab at trans people proves it so. Blackthelma on Medium, Feb 2, 2024.
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