Marcy Rheintgen, 20, faces a misdemeanor trespassing charge punishable by up to 60 days in jail and is due to appear in court in May.

Summary

Marcy Rheintgen, a 20-year-old transgender college student, was arrested at the Florida State Capitol after intentionally entering a women’s restroom in protest of the state’s transgender bathroom law.

Civil rights lawyers say it is the first known arrest under such laws in any U.S. state.

Rheintgen faces a misdemeanor trespassing charge and could face up to 60 days in jail.

Florida is one of only two states to criminalize such acts.

  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    11 hours ago

    Send in the biggest, burliest, hairiest ftm trans dudes into busy ladies rooms, the room that the state insists he must now legally use.

    I mean, that’s what we’ve functionally done. The distinction is that the biggest, burliest, hairiest dude isn’t ftm trans, he’s a fucking cop.

    In an exclusive interview with The Advocate, Morton detailed the humiliating and distressing encounter. She said that she had entered the restroom with her ex-girlfriend, who handed her a tampon, when two male deputies stormed in, shining flashlights into the stall and demanding she exit. Morton, still using the toilet, was stunned.

    “They were flashing lights on our feet and saying, ‘You have to get out of here. You have to come out. We need to talk to you,’” Morton said. “I’m telling them, ‘I’m still using the restroom. I’m sitting down, I’m peeing. What is the issue?’”

    When she finally exited the stall, she said she lifted her shirt to prove she was not a man, expecting the ordeal to end. Instead, she said one deputy continued to question her appearance, insisting she “looked like a man.” Morton started recording, later posting a 9-second clip to TikTok, where it has since been viewed more than 3.7 million times. “They came in here in the girls’ restroom because I’m a girl and they didn’t think I was a girl, so they tried to come take me away,” she says in the video.

    Like, this is the fucking future. The problem is that - outside of specifically LGBTQ media like The Advocate - it gets virtually no press. Cops terrorizing women in the restroom and demanding that they prove they aren’t Transgender just aren’t something the deeply conservative and heavily Trump-pilled local media oligarchs want appearing on TV.

    You get stories like OP’s instead, specifically because they do feed into the “Men are trying to sneak into the women’s room to attack your daughter/wife/girlfriend”