Florida police recently <\/strong>arrested a transgender woman for using the women’s restroom<\/a> in the state Capitol in Tallahassee, in what is believed to be the first such arrest in a state with an anti-trans bathroom ban<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Marcy Rheintgen, a 20-year-old college student and Illinois resident, was arrested March 19<\/strong>on a <\/strong>trespassing charge after she used a women’s restroom in a protest against Florida<\/a>’s law barring people<\/a> from using bathrooms that don’t align with their assigned sex at birth in government-owned or -leased buildings.<\/p>\n

According to The Associated Press<\/a>Rheintgen had sent letters to every Florida state lawmaker to inform them that she planned to use a restroom at the statehouse that corresponded with her gender identity. She included a photo of herself for identification, the Tampa Bay Times reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust. I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and that you can’t arrest us away,” she wrote. “I know that you know that I have dignity. That’s why I know that you won’t arrest me.”<\/p>\n

Jon Davidson, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, told the AP<\/a> that Rheintgen’s arrest is the first of its kind that ACLU’s attorneys are aware of in any state with a bathroom ban.<\/p>\n

Rheintgen, who the AP reported had been visiting her grandparents, was freed on pretrial release the day after her arrest, according to the Miami Herald<\/a>. If convicted on the misdemeanor trespassing charge, she could face up to 60 days in jail.<\/p>\n

Rheintgen told the AP that she wanted to show “the absurdity of this law in practice.”<\/p>\n

“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,” she said, adding that she was “horrified and scared” over what might happen next.<\/p>\n

Nadine Smith, the executive director of Equality Florida, an LGBTQ civil rights organization, said in a statement<\/a> that Rheintgen’s arrest was not about safety, but “about cruelty, humiliation, and the deliberate erosion of human dignity.”<\/p>\n

“Transgender people have been using restrooms aligned with their gender for generations without incident,” Smith wrote. “What’s changed is not their presence — it’s a wave of laws designed to intimidate them out of public life.”<\/p>\n

Florida is one of more than a dozen states with a bathroom ban<\/a>though Utah is the only other state to criminalize the act. <\/strong>In recent years, GOP lawmakers across the country have passed legislation to crack down on trans rights and strip protections — a pattern that the Trump administration has mirrored on the federal level<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Clarissa-je Lim<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking\/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Florida police recently arrested a transgender woman for using the women’s restroom in the state Capitol in Tallahassee, in what is believed to be the first such arrest in a state with an anti-trans bathroom ban. Marcy Rheintgen, a 20-year-old college student and Illinois resident, was arrested March 19on a trespassing charge after she used a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}