Dems. urge Biden admin. to block “hateful” trans ID policy that will sow “tension” & “confusion”

Florida Democrats have called on the Biden administration to block the state’s new policy banning transgender people from updating the gender marker on their driver licenses.

In a February 2 letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, all eight members of the Florida Democratic congressional delegation urged the Department of Homeland Security to pursue new rules under the federal Real ID Act “to ensure that Florida driver licenses and Federal identification documents remain consistent and in line with the purpose of Real ID.”

Related:

Florida will throw trans people in jail if they try to update the gender on their driver’s licenses

“They want to humiliate, harass, and use policy to eliminate transgender people from public life.”

The letter comes in response to a January 26 letter from Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHSMV) deputy executive director Robert Kynoch to the state county tax collector’s offices rescinding a previous policy that allowed individuals to correct their licenses’ gender markers to reflect their gender identity. Kynoch asserted that “‘gender’… does not refer to a person’s internal sense of his or her gender role of identification, but has historically and commonly been understood as a synonym for ‘sex,’ which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics.”

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“Misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex, on a driver license constitutes fraud,” Kynoch’s letter continued, “and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties, including cancellation, suspension, or revocation of his or her driver license.”

Under the new Florida policy, trans people who attempt to update their licenses face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The federal 2005 Real ID Act requires states to include a gender marker on driver’s licenses and ID cards. As The Hill notes, federal policy allows individuals to self-select the gender marker on their passports without having to provide medical documentation. Individuals can also select the gender marker “X” to denote an unspecified gender identity on passports.

Florida Democrats, led by Rep. Maxwell Frost, wrote that the state’s anti-trans policy is in direct conflict with the Real ID Act’s purpose of making identification documents more consistent and secure because it would force trans Floridians to carry state IDs on which the gender marker may differ from the gender maker on their federal ID documents like passports. The policy, they said, would “create confusion,” “increase tension and delays in already stressful situations like traffic stops and airport security,” and would “lead to unnecessary detentions and unlawful arrests.”

If policies like Florida’s are allowed to stand, Florida Democrats wrote, “they will undoubtedly continue to spread, creating more confusion and inconsistency while severely hampering Americans’ ability to travel, including LGBTQ+ American’s ability to leave states that are hostile to their existence.” They urged the DHS to create new rules that would require the gender/sex identifier on state ID’s compliant with the Real ID Act to match those on an individual’s federal ID documents and to pursue “any other avenues through which this discrimination can be combated.”