9 months ago
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida transgender residents are no longer allowed to change the gender on their driver’s license or ID card under the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles new policy.
In a memo released last week, the DHSMV directed county tax collectors not to issue replacement IDs or driver’s licenses for residents seeking to change the gender listed on their card. Current law requires that card applicants identify themselves by the gender of their sex at birth.
“The Department can issue a replacement license only when a license or permit is lost or stolen, or when there is a subsequent change in the licensee’s name, address, or restrictions,” the memo said.
The move comes after the state’s GOP-led Legislature approved a law that banned gender-affirming treatments for children and brought new restrictions for adults, including prohibiting Medicaid to be used for gender-affirming care.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association support gender-affirming care for adults and adolescents. But medical experts said gender-affirming care for children rarely, if ever, includes surgery. Instead, doctors are more likely to recommend counseling, social transitioning and hormone replacement therapy.
In recent years, Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed into law legislation that has received wide backlash from LGBTQ+ advocates, including making it a criminal offense for someone to use certain bathrooms that don’t align with their sex at birth and requesting data on from Florida universities on the number of people diagnosed with gender dysphoria or who have received treatment in campus clinics.
Brandon Wolf, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, wrote that the changes made by DHSMV would leave transgender residents vulnerable to unnecessary scrutiny.
“Those policies would forcibly out transgender people anywhere they use a driver’s license or identification document, including when checking in at a hotel, meeting friends at a bar, renting a car, or boarding a plane, among many other instances,” Wolf wrote in a statement.
DHSMV spokesperson Molly Best wrote in an email that agency Director Dave Kerner called for the review of its gender policies after he was appointed to the job by DeSantis early last year.
“The rescission pertains solely to replacement license requests,” Best wrote. “No changes have been made to the process of establishing gender on a newly issued Florida credential.”
"In Florida, you do not get to play identity politics with your driver license," she added.
However, a Florida House bill moving through the Legislature would apply to new credentials. The bill, HB 1639, sponsored by GOP state Rep. Doug Bankson, would replace the word “gender” from applications for ID cards and driver’s licenses and replace it with “sex.” The bill, which does not have a Senate sponsor, would also define sex as being the gender an applicant was given at birth.
Bankson’s bill was approved by the House Select Committee on Health Innovation on party lines last week, and now it’s scheduled to be heard by the Insurance and Banking Committee on Thursday.
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