Florida

Fla. House Bill Could Criminalize Bathroom Use for Transgender People

A new bill put forward by a Florida state lawmaker from Miami could make it a crime to use the restroom that doesn't correspond to your sex at birth, a proposal that could particularly impact transgender Floridians.

Rep. Frank Artiles’ bill would make it a first-degree misdemeanor for anyone who, in the bill's language, isn’t a “biological female” to use “single-sex public facilities designated for girls, women, ladies, or persons of the female sex.” The law would also limit men’s public restrooms to “biological males.”

The bill’s language was first reported by Salon.com, which noted that the bill would bar transgender people from using the restrooms that match their gender identities.

Artiles’ bill defined single-sex public facilities as “bathrooms, dressing rooms, fitting rooms, locker rooms, showers, and other similar facilities where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy” and that are maintained by “an owner of public accomodations, a school, or a place of employment; that conspicuously designated with appropriate signage for use by persons of only one sex; and that are designed or designated to be used by more than one person at a time.”

The proposed bill from Artiles also said that in the case of this law, “biological female” or “biological male” means the person’s sex “at birth.”

Artiles’ described the need for the protections in the bill saying, “Single-sex public facilities are places of increased vulnerability and present the potential for crimes against individuals using those facilities, including, but not limited 30 to, assault, battery, molestation, rape, voyeurism, and exhibitionism.”

The bill also opens up people who use the restroom that doesn't correspond to their sex at birth to civil penalties and allows civil action against operators of public facilities that violate the law.

The bill would also preempt any city or county “law, regulation, policy, or decree.”

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