The trespass charge has been dismissed against Mercy Leinyinchen, a 20-year-old transgender woman from Illinois. The Illinois transgender woman is believed to be the first to be arrested under a Florida ban that banned transgender bathroom use in public buildings.
On June 20, Leon County Judge Lashaun Liggans granted a motion from Rainzgen’s attorney to dismiss the case after the state failed to file claims or other necessary documents within 90 days of his arrest.
Riggans held that the charges had to be dismissed “because the expiry trial period has expired” because the state failed to act. This is a reference to Rheintgen’s Sixth Amendment rights, which protects the defendant from excessive delays in the legal process.
The ruling was based on technology. If the state filed the appropriate documents and Rheinzgen was found guilty at trial on a second misdemeanor charge of “trespassing on property after warning,” she may have been. I was punished You will receive a $500 fine for up to 60 days in prison.
Furthermore, since Rainzen was not charged under Florida’s “Private Space Safety Act” (the state’s so-called bathroom ban), she had no legal status to challenge the legitimacy of the law or claim to have violated civil rights.
The law criminalizes refusing to leave a multi-user toilet or change area in a government-owned building if it is sexually designated that does not match the sex assigned at birth. If a government employee refuses to leave after asking them to do so, a person could be arrested.
Rainzgen was arrested and charged with trespassing on March 19 after washing her hands in the women’s toilet at the Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, despite warnings from police officers who knew they were trying to violate the law.
Reinzen, who was visiting her grandparents in Florida, previously wrote letters to state representatives, attorney general and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis to share her intentions with women’s toilets on the Capitol according to her gender identity. She effectively challenged lawmakers to call police and arrest them, including photos of herself.
Police were waiting for Rhinezgen at the Capitol and issued a trespass warning, according to the arrest report.
“I’m here to break the law,” she is said to have responded while in the bathroom. Officers chased her inside her and warned that if she refused to leave she would be arrested.
Later I said New York Times She washed her hands in the sink for “30 seconds to a minute” before being taken into custody.
She told The Associated Press that she wanted to test the law so that people could actually see the absurdity of this law.
More than 12 states have passed laws restricting transgender access to toilets, but Florida and Utah only control two bathroom usage. Civil Liberties Group believes that Rhinezgen is not only the first person to be arrested for challenging the ban on toilets in Florida, but also the first person to face criminal prosecution for violating such laws.
As reason Magazine Fall Billing It’s attracting attentionthe law imposes flaws, ambiguous, ambiguous, ambiguous, overly broad and “complex regulations” about how changes to bathrooms and facilities in government-owned buildings are used. The law also includes many exemptions that make it difficult to determine if someone is violating or not.
“Because of its breadth and ambiguity, the impact of the law exceeds that. [transgender] Billings said: “The troublesome standard of the law is because it is a troublesome standard of the law that the officers of the Rheintgen case chose to trespass completely different and simpler crimes: property after warning.”
On July 1st, Rheintgen posted an Instagram account video Announcing that the charges against her had been dropped, she said she didn’t even need to go to trial, but she admitted that the ban was in force.
In the video, Rheintgen also pointed out that of the judge order – Unlike the original affidavit of possible causes, it uses the pronoun of “her/her” and the honor of a woman, encouraging a language that respects the American Bar Association resolution. Riggans wrote that this “contains individual gender identity, priority names, and pronouns.” Rheintgen called court approval of the ABA guidelines a victory for her. Perhaps for future transgender plaintiffs.
“We’ve kicked it out of court… [T]I don’t think his people, they didn’t know what they were doing,” Rhinezgen said of the state prosecutor. We won, we dismissed it. ”
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
