The Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles issued a memo last Friday telling county tax collectors to no longer allow people to update their gender identities on driver licenses and to prove that the gender on the license is the person’s biological sex using a “primary identification document,” records show.

Critics are calling the move an attack on trans people.

The memo, titled “Driver License Operation Manual-Issuance requirements-IR08-Gender requirements (Recission),” was issued as part of a review of the department’s policies “to better align the services provided by the Department and its partners to our stakeholders,” wrote Deputy Executive Director Robert Kynoch.

Director Dave Kerner ordered a review of policies last January to ensure they are consistent with state law, a spokesperson said Tuesday. Kerner is a former mayor of Palm Beach County.

The memo rescinds the existing policy of issuing a new license if a Florida resident wishes “to alter the gender marker on his or her license.” Now, a replacement license can be issued only if a license or permit is lost or stolen or if there is a change in information such as an address.

A person’s driver’s license must correspond to their biological sex, the memo states, which they must prove with supporting documentation.

“Furthermore, the term “gender” in s. 322.08, F.S., does not refer to a person’s internal sense of his or her gender role or identification, but has historically and commonly been understood as a synonym for “sex,” which is determined by innate and immutable biological and genetic characteristics,” the memo reads. “… Permitting an individual to alter his or her license to reflect an internal sense of gender role or identity, which is neither immutable nor objectively verifiable, undermines the purpose of an identification record and can frustrate the state’s ability to enforce its laws.”

County tax collectors must use a person’s supporting documents to establish their gender identity, the memo continues. Meanwhile, “misrepresenting one’s gender, understood as sex” on a driver’s license should be considered fraud, “and subjects an offender to criminal and civil penalties.”

Florida Rep. Anna Eskamani first posted a copy of the memo on X Tuesday, criticizing it as an attack on trans people. She told the South Florida Sun Sentinel she found out about it Monday night.

“I’m incredibly frustrated by another weaponization of state agencies by Gov. DeSantis,” Eskamani said Tuesday. “It just seems the state has no filter in how far they’ll go in attacking trans people.”

The Florida Democratic Party also condemned the new policy in a media release.

“Florida Republicans’ obsession with trans people has to stop,” FDP Chair Nikki Fried said in the release. “Instead of addressing our raging property insurance crisis or out-of-control rent hikes, the GOP continues to pursue blatantly transphobic policies to serve their made-up culture wars. Erasing and criminalizing trans people is absolutely disgusting and can’t be allowed to stand.”

The memo’s requirements about biological sex also raise questions for people who have already had their gender identities updated or people who appear to be the gender they identify as but not the sex they were assigned at birth.

“Are you going to check people’s genitals?” Eskamani asked.

In response to criticisms, an FLHSMV spokesperson said in a statement that the change in policy was necessary because it aligned with state law and protected the “security and reliability” or Florida driver’s licenses.

“Expanding the Department’s authority to issue replacement licenses dependent on one’s internal sense of gender or sex identification is violative of the law and does not serve to enhance the security and reliability of Florida issued licenses and identification cards,” the statement read in part. “The security, reliability, and accuracy of government issued credentials is paramount.”

The agency also said in the statement that the only thing that has actually changed since Friday is the process of replacing a license, but “no changes have been made to the process of establishing gender on a newly issued Florida credential, governed by s. 322.08, F.S.”

However, one of the listed updates to the policy states that “the customer’s gender as displayed on the driver license or identification card must be taken from a primary identification document.”

The Florida statute currently requires people to include their gender along with their other information in their driver’s license application, but it doesn’t specify what is meant by gender or how that information must be provided.

A bill moving through the Florida House is seeking to change that. It replaces the word gender with sex and requires applications for driver’s licenses and any other state-issued identification card, as well as the printed card itself, to include birth sex instead of gender identity.

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