The ACLU of Florida has criticized a Miami Republican's proposed bill which it claims would “criminalize the use of public restrooms by transgender people.”

Rep. Frank Artiles' Single-Sex Public Facilities bill aims to restrict public bathroom use to the “persons of sex for which facility is designated.”

“Requires that use of single-sex facilities be restricted to persons of sex for which facility is designated; prohibits knowingly & willfully entering single-sex public facility designated for or restricted to persons of other biological sex; provides exemptions; provides private cause of action against violators; provides for preemption,” the bill states.

Artiles acted roughly two months after Miami-Dade County approved an ordinance which prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression. He told The Miami Herald that he responded out of concern for “public safety.”

“It's not that the transgender or the gender identity community is dangerous by any means,” Artiles said, “but [the ordinance] creates a giant loophole for criminals, sexual deviants and sexual predators to walk into a shower, a woman's locker room under the cover of law.”

“A man such as myself can walk into the bathroom at LA Fitness while women are taking showers, changing, and simply walk in there. Someone can say, ‘What are you doing there?’ Under the ordinance, I don't have to respond. It's subjective. If I feel like a woman that day, I can be allowed to be in that locker room. I don’'t know about you, but I find that disturbing.”

Daniel Tilley, staff attorney for the ACLU of Florida, called the bill “dehumanizing” to transgender people.

“This ‘show your papers to pee’ bill denigrates both transgender and non-transgender people alike,” Tilley said in a statement. “In addition to dehumanizing transgender people in particular, it invites humiliation and harassment of anyone who is not considered sufficiently feminine or masculine in the eyes of the beholder. Will girls in soccer uniforms be stopped at the bathroom door and asked to produce their birth certificates?”

“This bill also puts the burden on business owners to monitor customers' use of restrooms and ask intrusive and humiliating questions of customers or be at risk of liability. That's not good for business, much less for the customers themselves, whether transgender or not. The bill would essentially require everyone to carry their birth certificate around so that other citizens can subject them to random interrogations in the restroom.”

“And given the smooth implementation of gender identity protections for public accommodations in 17 states and more than 200 cities around the country, the bill is as unnecessary as it is hurtful. Just as a similarly mean-spirited bill in Arizona failed, we expect this absurd bill to fail as well,” he added.