For Jude Speegle, a 29-year-old Daytona Beach transgender activist with two children, changing the gender designation on his driver’s license in April 2023 represented a milestone in his transition. He described the six-month process of changing the name and gender on his legal documentation as mostly seamless.
“I had zero issues,” Speegle said.
No longer. Florida has announced that it will become what is believed to be the first state not to allow drivers to change the gender markers on their drivers’ licenses, under any circumstances. The decision came from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, run by Dave Kerner, a political appointee of Gov. Ron DeSantis. It was announced in a memo last week asserting that a person’s gender “is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics.”
“Permitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable or objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws,” said the agency memo.