Florida drivers banned from changing gender on licence
FLORIDA residents have been banned from changing the gender listed on their driving licence in a move that has provoked an angry response from trans rights campaigners.
Previously, residents could change the sex on their licence by submitting either a court order or a doctor’s letter as proof of gender transition treatment.
Critics see the change as the latest attempt by the Republican-run state led by governor Ron Desantis to discriminate against transgender people.
The state’s department of highway safety and motor vehicles (DHSMV) announced the rule change in a memo to county tax collectors last week. It means Florida is now aligned with Kansas.
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 decision comes as state Republicans push a bill to require driving licences to display the carrier’s sex at birth.
Democrats 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 state’s Democratic Party chairman, said.
“We’ve seen state agencies continually weaponised under Ron Desantis ... allowing Right-wing extremists to get the wildly unpopular policies they want without having to go on record as voting for them.”
A spokesman for the National Center for Transgender Equality 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.”