A Florida law restricting transgender individuals from using bathrooms and locker rooms that do not align with their biological sex took effect on Saturday.
The legislation, H.B. 1521, known as the “Safety in Private Spaces Act,” makes it a crime for someone to use the facilities that align with their “gender identity” instead of their biological sex. The law applies to publicly-owned educational buildings, government buildings, correctional facilities and all school changing facilities.
“[Specified] persons are subject to discipline for refusing to depart certain restrooms and changing facilities under certain circumstances; providing that specified persons who enter certain restrooms or changing facilities and refuse to depart when asked to do so commit the criminal offense of trespass,” the law reads. “[Females] and males should be provided restrooms and changing facilities for their exclusive use, respective to their sex, in order to maintain public safety, decency, decorum, and privacy.”
According to WFLA, the law faced backlash from Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ+ advocates, who argued that the legislation targets transgender people.
“Mandating people use bathrooms based on their assigned sex invites targeted harassment for every person- trans or not- who uses the restroom. It makes trans kids not want to do the basic human function of relieving themselves because they’re uncomfortable in their skin and with the people around them,” a transgender person, who spoke anonymously, told WFLA.
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State Rep. Rachel Plakon, a Republican, reportedly said that the law “is not about targeting any particular group of people. It is about the safety of all Floridians.”
“Florida is proud to lead the way in standing up for our children,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president in 2024, said when he signed the legislation. “As the world goes mad, Florida represents a refuge of sanity and a citadel of normalcy.”
Public bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms in Florida will have separate facilities based on biological sex.
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) May 18, 2023
Our wives and daughters deserve protections from woke ideology run amok. pic.twitter.com/PHKPCVORRl
"A woman should not be in a locker room having to worry about someone from the opposite sex being in their locker room," DeSantis said in remarks about the legislation.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been working on legislation similar to Florida’s at the federal level. At a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on a piece of legislation known as the “Parents Bill of Rights,” Scott Smith, a parent who made headlines a year ago when he was removed from a Loudoun County School Board meeting, said that his daughter was sexually assaulted by “a boy wearing a skirt” in a girls’ school bathroom.
“Eighteen months ago I was arrested at a Loudoun County school board meeting. I was restrained, tackled and charged with disorderly conduct and slandered in the media across the world. But my real crime was voicing my concerns as a parent and standing up for my family and my community,” he said. “I went to the school board meeting to speak up for my daughter and to get some answers that we deserved. Instead of putting her safety and the safety of other students first, the Loudoun County school board tried to hide the facts and protect their administrators at all costs. We now know that three girls were attacked by the same now-convicted sexual predator.”
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