Florida Attorney General threatens action over Gainesville search policy

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(The Center Square) –Gainesville’s Police Department has come under fire for allowing men who identify as women to request searches by female officers, according to Attorney General James Uthmeier.

In a letter to Chief Nelson Moya of Gainesville PD, Uthmeier threatened legal action, saying the policy serves no legitimate law enforcement purpose and endangers officers and detainees.

“Because they are biologically different, men and women are not similarly situated with respect to their size, strength, and privacy interests,” Uthmeier wrote. “But your department’s policy denies female officers and detainees the protections of sex-based search protocols rooted in those immutable biological differences. It imposes an unsafe and illogical requirement for female officers to search males who identify as female yet who possess the strength, size, and anatomy of a male. Searches of females by male officers who identify as female create parallel safety, privacy, and dignity concerns for female detainees.”

The department’s policy says that searches should be conducted by an officer “with the same gender expression or identity” as the individual being searched. It also states that if an officer is uncertain about a detainee’s gender expression or identity that they should “ask the individual for their preference.”

Uthmeier said the policy likely violates the Florida Civil Rights Act by exposing women to disadvantageous terms or conditions of employment.

“This is not a neutral accommodation,” he wrote. “It imposes asymmetric burdens on females based on a mental state – gender identity – that has nothing to do with the biological considerations that must be addressed when officers search detainees.”

The attorney general said standard law enforcement search policies should be guided by standards upholding officer safety, detainee safety, privacy and dignity, effective, consistent law enforcement and maintenance of order, and compliance with the Fourth Amendment.

“Affirming an individual’s gender expression or identity – a self-reported feeling decoupled from physical reality and unverifiable by third parties – is not one of them,” Uthmeier said.

Chief Moya has until August 15 to confirm that the Gainesville Police Department has rescinded the policy. Otherwise, the attorney general said his office may take legal action.

Gainesville is not isolated with its search policy. The OrlandoPolice Department has a similar policy that states that when searching someone who is transgender or non-conforming, the search “ideally, and where possible, should be conducted by an officer of the same sex as the transgender or gender non-confirming individual expresses.”

If officers are unable to determine the person’s “gender expression” the policy directs them to “respectfully and in a professional manner ask” the individual their gender expression.

It’s unclear how many other Florida police departments have similar policies.