Trespassing charges have been dismissed against Marcy Rheintgen, a 20-year-old transgender woman from Illinois who is believed to be the first person arrested under Florida’s ban on transgender bathroom use in public buildings.
On June 20, Leon County Judge Lashawn Riggans granted a motion from Rheintgen’s attorney to dismiss the case after the state failed to file charging documents and other required paperwork within 90 days of her arrest — violating her Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial.
Riggans ruled that because the state failed to act, the charges had to be dismissed “because the speedy trial period has expired” — a reference to Rheintgen’s Sixth Amendment right, which protects defendants from undue delays in the legal process.
The ruling was based on a technicality. Had the state filed the proper paperwork and Rheintgen been found guilty of a second-degree misdemeanor charge of “trespass on property after warning” at trial, she could have been punished with up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine.
In addition, because Rheintgen was not charged under Florida’s “Safety in Private Spaces Act” — the state’s so-called bathroom ban — she had no legal standing to challenge the law’s legitimacy or argue that it violated her civil rights, as those claims were not relevant to the charge brought against her.
The law makes it a crime for someone to refuse to leave a multi-user restroom or changing area in a government-owned building if it is designated for a sex that does not match their assigned sex at birth. A person can be arrested if they refuse to leave after being asked to do so by a government employee.
Rheintgen was arrested and charged with trespassing on March 19 after washing her hands in a women’s bathroom at the Florida Statehouse in Tallahassee, despite warnings from police officers who knew she intended to defy the law.
Rheintgen — who was visiting her grandparents in Florida — had previously sent letters to state representatives, the attorney general, and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, informing them of her intent to use the women’s bathroom at the Statehouse in accordance with her gender identity. She even included a photo of herself, effectively challenging lawmakers to call the police and have her arrested.
According to the arrest report, police were waiting for Rheintgen at the Statehouse and issued a trespass warning.
“I am here to break the law,” she allegedly responded while entering the restroom. Officers followed her inside and warned that she would be arrested if she refused to leave.
Rheintgen later toldThe New York Times that she washed her hands at the sink for “30 seconds to a minute” before being taken into custody.
She told the Associated Press that she had wanted to test the law so people could “see the absurdity of this law in practice.”
While more than a dozen states have passed laws restricting transgender access to restrooms, only two — Florida and Utah — have criminal statutes governing bathroom use. Civil liberties groups believe Rheintgen is not only the first person arrested for challenging Florida’s bathroom ban, but the first in the nation to face criminal prosecution for violating such a law — even though that was not technically the charge filed against her.
As Reason magazine’s Autumn Billings noted, the statute is flawed, poorly written, vague, and overly broad, imposing “complex regulations” on how individuals use bathrooms or changing facilities in government-owned buildings. The law also includes a host of exemptions that make it difficult to determine whether someone is in violation.
“Because of its breadth and vagueness, the law’s impact goes beyond [transgender] individuals and puts everyone on notice that their mundane use of facilities could invite action from law enforcement,” Billings writes. “The law’s cumbersome criteria could be why officers in Rheintgen’s case opted to arrest her under a completely separate — and simpler — crime: trespass on property after warning.”
On July 1, Rheintgen posted an Instagram video announcing that the charges against her had been dropped, saying she didn’t even have to go to trial — though she acknowledged the ban remains in place.
In the video, Rheintgen also noted that the judge’s order — unlike the original probable cause affidavit — used “she/her” pronouns and female honorifics, citing the American Bar Association’s resolution encouraging respectful language. Riggans wrote that this “includes an individual’s gender identity, preferred name, and pronouns, which this Court honors.” Rheintgen called the court’s acknowledgment of the ABA guidelines a win for her — and, presumably, for future transgender plaintiffs.
“We got it thrown out of court…. [T]hese people, I guess they didn’t know what they were doing,” Rheintgen said of state prosecutors. “DeSantis doesn’t really know what he’s doing generally, but we won, essentially. We won, we got it dismissed.”
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