Transgender student’s arrest for violating Florida bathroom law is thought to be a first

By HANNAH SCHOENBAUM
Associated Press

A transgender college student declared “I am here to break the law” before entering a women’s restroom at the Florida State Capitol and being led out in handcuffs by police. Civil rights attorneys say the arrest of Marcy Rheintgen last month is the first they know of for violating transgender bathroom restrictions passed by numerous state legislatures across the country.

Capitol police had been alerted and were waiting for Rheintgen, 20, when she entered the building in Tallahassee March 19. They told her she would receive a trespass warning once she entered the women’s restroom to wash her hands and pray the rosary, but she was later placed under arrest when she refused to leave, according to an arrest affidavit.

Rheintgen faces a misdemeanor trespassing charge punishable by up to 60 days in jail and is due to appear in court in May.

“I wanted people to see the absurdity of this law in practice,” Rheintgen told The Associated Press. “If I’m a criminal, it’s going to be so hard for me to live a normal life, all because I washed my hands. Like, that’s so insane.”

At least 14 states have adopted laws barring transgender women from entering women’s bathrooms at public schools and, in some cases, other government buildings. Only two — Florida and Utah — criminalize the act. A judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked Montana’s new bathroom law.

Rheintgen’s arrest in Florida is the first that American Civil Liberties Union attorneys are aware of in any state with a criminal ban, senior staff attorney Jon Davidson said.

Rheintgen was in town visiting her grandparents when she decided to pen a letter to each of Florida’s 160 state lawmakers informing them of her plan to enter a public restroom inconsistent with her sex assigned at birth. The Illinois resident said her act of civil disobedience was fueled by anger at seeing a place she loves and visits regularly grow hostile toward trans people.

“I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust,” she wrote in her letter to lawmakers. “I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and that you can’t arrest us away. I know that you know that I have dignity. That’s why I know that you won’t arrest me.”

Her arrest comes as many Republican-led states that have enacted restroom restrictions grapple with how to enforce them. Laws in Alabama, Kansas, Kentucky and North Dakota do not spell out any enforcement mechanism, and even the state laws that do largely rely on private individuals to report violations.

In Utah, activists flooded a tip line created to alert state officials to possible violations of its bathroom law with thousands of hoax reports in an effort to shield transgender residents and their allies from any legitimate complaints that could lead to an investigation.

The Republican sponsors of the Florida bathroom law, Rep. Rachel Plakon and Sen. Erin Grall, did not immediately respond Thursday to phone messages, emails and visits to their offices to seek comment on Rheintgen’s arrest. They have said the restrictions are needed to protect women and girls in single-sex spaces.

Opponents of the law such as Nadine Smith, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Equality Florida, said it creates dangerous situations for all by giving people license to police others’ bodies in bathrooms.

“The arrest of Marcy Rheintgen is not about safety,” Smith said. “It’s about cruelty, humiliation and the deliberate erosion of human dignity. Transgender people have been using restrooms aligned with their gender for generations without incident. What’s changed is not their presence — it’s a wave of laws designed to intimidate them out of public life.”

If Rheintgen is convicted, she worries she could be jailed with men, forced to cut her long hair and prevented temporarily from taking gender-affirming hormones.

“People are telling me it’s a legal test, like this is the first case that’s being brought,” she said. “It’s how they test the law. But I didn’t do this to test the law. I did it because I was upset. I can’t have any expectations for what’s going to happen because this has never been prosecuted before. I’m horrified and scared.”

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Associated Press writer Kate Payne contributed reporting from Tallahassee.