Transgender activists staged die-ins at driver's license offices statewide, with crowds disrupting business in many lobbies. The demonstrations follow a controversial decision to stop allowing gender changes on state ID.
After 10 a.m., protesters arrived in lobbies for tax collectors in Alachua, Hillsborough, Miami-Dade and Orange counties and collapsed on the ground, feigning death in the offices. Some held gravestones reading "Killed By the DMV" or "Killed by Ron DeSantis."
The protests were organized in large part by Prism, an LGBTQ advocacy group leading the "Let Trans People Drive" campaign.
"Participants will stage die-ins to underscore the devastating consequences of efforts to erase the transgender community's legal recognition," read a release from the group
Prism has also asked President Joe Biden's administration and the Justice Department to intervene and prohibit the change in policy based on the federal Real ID Act from 2005. That allows the establishment of federal criteria for government IDs. A virtual campaign through Wednesday promoted more than 650 emails to the administration seeking intervention in the Florida policy.
The event served to spotlight a change in state policy on issuing state IDs. While the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FLHSMV) in May 2022 updated its guidelines to allow a change in gender of state IDs without proof of gender reassignment surgery, the state agency sent out a memo to Tax Collector's Offices in January reversing that policy.
FLHSMV Deputy Executive Director Robert Kynoch wrote in a memo to every Tax Collector's Office that the term gender "does not refer to a person's internal sense of his or her gender role or identification, but has historically and commonly been understood as a synonym for 'sex,' which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics."
That memo said having a state ID or license listing a gender that did not align with gender assigned at birth would effectively be violating Florida's statute prohibiting false IDs. That would make individuals guilty of a felony and subject to up to five years of prison or probation and a $5,000 fine.
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