Transgender people in Florida are no longer allowed to update the gender marker on their driver’s licenses in the latest escalation of anti-trans rhetoric in the Sunshine State.
The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (DHSMV) has quietly changed a longstanding policy that allowed transgender Floridians to have state-issued IDs that accurately reflect who they are.
In a memo from July 2011, the agency said Floridians who wished to update their gender markers on their driver’s licenses no longer needed to provide proof of gender-affirming surgery.
But in a recent internal agency memo addressed to county tax collectors, DHSMV Deputy Executive Director Robert Kynoch said the department would no longer update a trans person’s driver’s license with their correct gender identity “to ensure all guidance provided by the Department is consistent with Florida Law.”
“Permitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity … undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws,” he wrote.
BREAKING: Intending to criminalize transgender Floridians, the Florida Dept of Highway Safety & Motor Vehicle published a memo reversing a policy allowing trans Floridians to update the gender marker on their driver’s licenses or IDs. https://t.co/6FkCVfyPHL
— Equality Florida (@equalityfl) January 30, 2024
Kynoch also warned that “misrepresenting” a person’s gender on a state-issued identification “constitutes fraud … and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties, including cancellation, suspension, or revocation of his or her driver’s license.”
Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried on Tuesday characterized the move as an “absolutely disgusting” attempt to erase and criminalize trans people in the state.
National and state LGBTQ groups also blasted the news as a reflection of the blatant anti-transgender policies championed by the state’s Republican governor and failed presidential candidate Ron DeSantis.
“The DeSantis administration’s obsession with scapegoating transgender Floridians has escalated into an outrageous attack that further erodes freedom and liberty in our state,” Nadine Smith, executive director of Equality Florida, told the Daily News in an email.
Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson said the move and others like it are a clear sign “these-right wing extremists are no longer hiding the ball.” HRC is the nation’s largest LGBTQ civil rights organization.
“They want to humiliate, harass, and use policy to eliminate transgender people from public life,” Robinson added, while vowing to keep fighting against their “sinister agenda.”
