Florida residents have been banned from changing the sex listed on their driving licences.
The move has provoked an angry response from campaigners and opposition politicians, who view it as the latest decision by the Republican-run state to discriminate against transgender people.
Previously, residents of Florida – whose governor is Ron DeSantis, the former presidential candidate – could change the sex on their licence by submitting either a court order for a name change or a doctor’s letter as proof of gender transition treatment.
But last week the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) announced the rule change in a memo to county tax collectors. It means Florida is now aligned with Kansas in fully banning transgender residents from updating the gender on their driving licences.
‘Criminal and civil’ fraud
Robert Kynoch, the department’s deputy executive director, said in the memo that someone “misrepresenting” their gender, meaning not using their sex assigned at birth, constitutes “criminal and civil” fraud.
“Permitting an individual to alter his or her licence to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable nor objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws,” the memo stated.
The department separately issued a statement saying that expanding its “authority to issue replacement licences dependent on one’s internal sense of gender or sex identification is violative of the law and does not serve to enhance the security and reliability of Florida-issued licences”.
The decision comes as state Republicans are pushing a bill requiring driving licences to display the carrier’s sex at birth rather than their gender identity.
‘Obsession with trans people’
Democrats in Florida criticised the decision, placing it in the context of a wider agenda from Mr DeSantis and his political allies.
“Florida Republicans’ obsession with trans people has to stop,” Nikki Fried, the Florida Democratic Party chairman, said.
“We’ve seen state agencies continually weaponised under Ron DeSantis, and this rule change at DHSMV serves the same purpose as the rest — allowing Right-wing extremists to get the wildly unpopular policies they want without having to go on the record as voting for them.”
A spokesman for the National Center for Transgender Equality, a campaign group, said: “When a government agency refuses to provide identification that aligns with a person’s identity, it implies that the identity and consequently the individuals themselves are not valid or worthy of respect.”
