Bill won’t be heard to mandate biological sex on driver’s licenses, Senate President Passidomo says
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Lawmaker efforts to mandate biological sex and ban gender identity on driver’s license are set to die out this legislative session, said Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples.
Despite the measure running out of time for Senate committee consideration, even as it moves through the House, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has already implemented a rule change requiring biological sex on licenses statewide.
Passidomo’s response came on the same day protestors descended on the Florida Capitol opposing the legislation, and other bills impacting the LGBTQ community, with the tagline, “let us live.”
“That bill, as far as I recall, that bill is still stuck in committee,” Passidomo said, noting per Senate rules, bills can’t circumvent the committee process.
Florida bans gender identity from driver’s licenses
Reps. Doug Bankson, R-Apopka, and Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, sponsored the bill in the House, HB 1639.
Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles Deputy Director Robert Kynoch wrote to all state county tax collectors in January that licenses can no longer be reissued for the purpose of reflecting one’s gender identity, arguing that policy hampered “the state’s ability to enforce its laws.”
“Permitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable nor objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record,” the letter said.
The department wrote that replacement licenses are only allowed when it is lost, stolen, or if there are changes to the person’s name or address.
“The term ‘gender’ […] does not refer to a person’s internal sense of his or her gender role or identification,” it said. “[It] has historically and commonly been understood as a synonym for ‘sex,’ which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics.”
The letter said that keeping licensees’ classification in line with their immutable characteristics is important because of the license’s “critical role in assisting public and private entities in correctly establishing the identity of a person presenting the license.”
