Participants at the 2025 Let Us Live march during Equality Florida’s Pride at the Capitol event in Tallahassee. (Photo by Luis Salazar)
A transgender woman was arrested by Capitol Police in Tallahassee March 19 after she went into a women’s restroom to wash her hands.
According to the Miami Herald, Marcy Rheintgen, a 20-year-old Illinois resident, was arrested and charged with trespassing by two officers who has been waiting outside of a public restroom which Rheintgen had stated in a letter that she would be using in protest of Florida’s Facility Requirements Based on Sex law, which was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in May 2023.
The law bans trans Floridians from using shared restrooms that align with their gender identity in publicly owned or leased buildings like airports, convention centers, government facilities — like the state Capitol building, some stadiums, schools and universities.
“It also empowers extremists to harass others in bathrooms, giving them license to demand that someone be removed from a bathroom if they suspect they don’t belong,” said Brandon Wolf during a 2023 interview with Watermark Out News. “Already, we’ve seen viral videos of women — both cisgender and transgender — being confronted in restrooms or asked to leave. This law will escalate those instances of harassment and criminalize people who are simply using the restroom.”
Rheintgen sent the letter to Florida lawmakers ahead of her visit warning them that she was going to use that particular restroom at the state Capitol building March 19. Rheintgen included a photo of herself with the letter so they could identify her.
“I know that you know in your heart that this law is wrong and unjust,” Rheintgen said in her letter according to the Miami Hearld. “I know that you know in your heart that transgender people are human too, and you can’t arrest us away. … I know that you know that I have dignity. That’s why I know that you won’t arrest me.”
Rheintgen was arrested and released from jail on pretrial release about 24 hours later. The trespass charge is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail.
The arrest came during Equality Florida’s Pride at the Capitol event, which saw LGBTQ+ rights activists from across the state and country visit Tallahassee to speak with lawmakers about laws impacting the LGBTQ+ community.
Equality Florida’s executive director, Nadine Smith, issued a statement April 1, stating that Rheintgen’s arrest was “not about safety,” rather it was “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,” Smith said.
Smith goes on to say that the government policing people’s bodies and identities is “absurd and dangerous.”
“Many transgender people continue to use public restrooms that match their gender without issue because most people understand what this law refuses to admit: transgender people are simply human beings living their lives, not threats,” Smith said. “The true goal is intimidation. 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.”
Equality Florida states they were not aware of Rheintgen’s protest beforehand, however the organization said it “aligns with the long tradition of civil disobedience.”
“[T]he intentional breaking of an unjust law, done publicly and deliberately without causing harm, to expose its cruelty,” Smith stated. “She wrote lawmakers, identified herself, and made it clear that this was a protest, not a threat.
“We’ve seen laws like this before,” Smith continued. “Whether it was denying access to lunch counters, water fountains, or restrooms, the goal was always the same: to diminish a group’s humanity and license public cruelty. That strategy failed then, and it will fail again because people are standing up, telling the truth, and refusing to be erased.”
Speaking with the Miami Herald, Rheintgen said that she regrets her experience, adding that she didn’t think that she would actually be arrested.
“Everything that is politics seems very abstract and philosophical from far away,” Rheintgen said to the Herald. “This is the first time it’s really affected me. I got arrested and I got sent to jail because of Gov. DeSantis’ policies — like that’s crazy, that’s crazy!”
