1 week Ago By HuffPost
A 20-year-old trans woman spent 24 hours in jail after entering a woman’s restroom in the Florida State Capitol as an act of protest against an anti-trans bathroom law. On March 19, Marcy Rheintgen, who is from Illinois, showed up at the state house in Tallahassee and told the officers of her goal: “I am here to break the law,” according to The New York Times . Initially, officers told her she’d receive a trespass warning if she entered, The Times reported.
She then spent 30 to 60 seconds inside a bathroom on the second floor of the House office before being told to leave. “I was originally intending to pray the rosary, but I didn’t have enough time,” she told the Times in an interview. “I was just washing my hands, and they told me to leave.
” Rheintgen was then arrested on suspicion of misdemeanor trespassing and spent 24 hours in jail, The Associated Press reported . She now faces 60 days in jail and a $500 fine if convicted, and her arraignment is scheduled for May. “The climate around trans issues has gotten, it’s reached a fever peak.
And people are dehumanizing us. And there was like a point where I was like, If I don’t go to jail now, I’m going to go to jail later ,” she said in a 23-minute video posted on X on Monday. “Things are getting scary.
” The “Safety in Private Spaces Act ,” passed in 2023, makes it criminal trespass for individuals to go into a restroom or changing facility that doesn’t align with the sex they were assigned at birth. The law applies to government buildings, correctional facilities and schools. According to the Movement Advancement Project , at least 19 states have implemented some sort of anti-trans bathroom law since 2021.
Experts at the American Civil Liberties Union have said that Rheintgen’s case is the first known time that a person has been arrested under an anti-trans bathroom law. However, Florida law enforcement officials told the New York Times that Rheintgen was arrested for “trespass on property after warning,” not the state’s bathroom law. HuffPost reached out to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for comment, but they did not immediately respond.
“I just want dignity,” Rheintgen said in her video on Monday. She also said that being in jail was “really isolating and lonely,” prompting her to cry virtually the entire time. “I felt like an animal.
” Ahead of her protest and arrest, Rheintgen contacted Florida representatives, telling them of her plans. She even included a picture of herself. “I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust,” Rheintgen said in a letter, according to the Miami Herald .
“I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and you can’t arrest us away.” Equality Florida, a civil rights organization, released a statement condemning Rheintgen’s arrest on April 1. “The arrest of Marcy Rheintgen is not about safety.
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,” Equality Florida’s Executive Director Nadine Smith said.
“These laws are largely unenforceable. And for good reason: policing people’s bodies and identities in bathrooms is both absurd and dangerous,” Smith said. “If you can’t safely or legally use a restroom, your time in any public space is limited.
That’s the point. These laws don’t protect anyone; they push transgender people out of everyday life, shrinking their freedom and making them vulnerable to harassment and arrest.” Related.
...
