A second Florida house committee voted in favor of bill on Tuesday that would result in arrests for transgender people who use ‘wrong’ bathroom

A Florida bill that would make it illegal for transgender people to use bathrooms meant for the sex other than what they were assigned at birth is one step closer to becoming a law. The government operations subcommittee of the Florida house voted in favor of the bill in a 7-4 vote on Tuesday.

The HB 583 bill requires users of single-sex public restrooms to prove their gender or face arrest. The bill defines gender as “person’s biological sex, either male or female, at birth”. Such definition, according to LGBT advocates, targets trans people.

“[A] person who knowingly and willfully enters a single-sex public facility designated for or restricted to persons of the other biological sex commits a misdemeanor of the first degree,” the bill reads.

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The bill was proposed by Miami Republican Frank Artiles, who says it is a response to Miami’s new non-discrimination ordinance. The ordinance, designed to protect trans rights, allows men to legally enter women’s restrooms to assault them, he said. His bill is supposed to help prevent that.

“Single-sex public facilities are places of increased vulnerability and present the potential for crimes against individuals using those facilities, including, but not limited to, assault, battery, molestation, rape, voyeurism, and exhibitionism,” the bill reads.

The bill might actually force some trans people to do exactly what Artiles is hoping to prevent. One trans man speaking against the bill during the Tuesday’s session pointed out that his license says female on it. By passing the bill into law, the House would be forcing a man into the woman’s bathroom.

“The passage of this bill will in effect require all women, millions of women in the state of Florida, to allow men in their bathroom,” Jean-David Parlier, a trans man, said during the two hour hearing, according to the Miami Herald. “I am concerned about the safety standards.”

The bill is tackling a problem that doesn’t exist, claim LGBT activists.

“Transgender people need to use the the restroom the same as anyone,” said Gina Duncan, director of transgender inclusion for Equality Florida. She called the bill dehumanizing. “If anything, we want and need to be protected from undue attention and harassment – not be told we’re committing a crime if someone thinks we’re in the wrong place.”

Enforcement of the bill is also something that has troubled its opponents.

“Frank Artiles’s bill is a mean-spirited attempt to bully Floridians and places an undue burden on our businesses,” the Florida Democratic party chair, Allison Tant, said in the statement after the bill passed through the house civil justice subcommittee earlier this month in a 9-5 vote. “This is a bigoted solution in search of a problem, and the Florida GOP should be ashamed of themselves.”

Now that the bill has passed through the government operations subcommittee, it is to be voted on by the house judiciary committee.