Identity Is Not a Crime: Florida’s HB 429 and the Erosion of Constitutional Protections
- Kathryn Anne
- Jan 28
- 8 min read
Friends across the United States and around the world need to pay attention to what is happening in Florida right now. Florida’s CS/HB 429 is not just a Florida issue. Florida has historically been a testing ground for policies that later ripple outward across the country. What is written here, how it is enforced, and what the public quietly accepts sets precedent. This bill expands how the state defines and prosecutes so-called “gang-related” activity, and while the word biker never appears, the impact reaches far beyond the page and into real lives.
The most dangerous part of this bill is buried in the definitions. Under Florida Statute 874.03, a “criminal gang member” is defined as “a person who meets two or more of the following criteria.” Among those criteria are admitting “in person or on an online platform or social media” to being a gang member, or being “identified or claimed by a gang as one of its members.” This immediately opens the door for speech, perception, and third-party labeling to carry legal weight without proof of criminal conduct. Identity begins to matter more than behavior.
But the bill goes much further. A person may also be labeled a criminal gang member if they are “identified as a criminal gang member by a parent, guardian, or spouse living with the person.” Anyone who understands real human relationships knows how dangerous this is. Families carry conflict, fear, coercion, misunderstanding, trauma, and power imbalance. Yet this bill allows those dynamics to become legal evidence. In no other area of criminal law do we allow family relationships alone to function as a foundation for criminal identity, because we understand how easily that can be abused.
The statute further allows identification by “a documented reliable informant,” or even “an informant of previously untested reliability,” so long as the claim is “corroborated by independent information.” Informant systems are historically fragile and incentive-driven. Corroboration does not always mean truth. Often, it simply means the same assumption echoed twice through different channels.
For motorcycle clubs, the next provisions are especially alarming. A person may be identified as a criminal gang member if they “adopt the style of dress of a criminal gang,” “use a hand sign identified as used by a criminal gang,” or “have a tattoo identified as used by a criminal gang.” Patches, colors, symbols, and tattoos are not crimes. They are identity, culture, history, lineage, and expression. Yet this bill allows deeply personal markers to be reframed as criminal indicators.
Association alone is also sufficient. The statute allows designation if a person “associates with one or more known criminal gang members,” or has been “observed in the company of one or more known criminal gang members two or more times.” Motorcycle clubs are communities by nature. Members ride together, gather together, bury their dead together, and show up for each other in life’s hardest moments. That is not criminal conspiracy. That is human connection. Under this bill, proximity itself becomes suspicious. This is guilt by proximity, not guilt by conduct.
The bill explicitly expands into speech and online presence. It includes “gang-related activity on an online platform or social media,” and clarifies that “where a single act or factual transaction satisfies more than one criterion, each of those criteria has thereby been satisfied.” This stacking provision matters. One post, one photo, one comment can be counted multiple times. A single act becomes multiplied evidence. Context is lost. Intent is inferred.
The statute then defines “gang-related language” as “any verbal or written statement that signals gang affiliation, supports gang activity, or uses recognized gang codes, symbols, or terminology,” explicitly including digital and social-media statements. Expression itself becomes risk.
This does not stop at investigation. The bill explicitly ties these definitions to Florida’s harshest punishments. Under section 921.141, an aggravating factor for capital sentencing now includes when “the capital felony was committed by a criminal gang member, as defined in s. 874.03.” That means tattoos, association, speech, or online presence can influence whether someone faces life imprisonment or the death penalty. Identity is elevated from suspicion to a factor that can determine life or death.
The bill then embeds these same definitions into detention facilities. Under section 951.23, jails may designate individuals to assess whether inmates are criminal gang members or associates using these criteria and transmit that information to law enforcement at least biweekly. This creates a feedback loop. A label follows a person into jail, is reinforced through survival-based association, and is sent back into law-enforcement systems as confirmed status. Bias becomes institutional record. Once labeled, it is incredibly difficult to escape.
For bikers and clubs, this is devastating. Tattoos do not disappear at the jail door. Identity does not vanish. Cultural expression becomes institutional evidence. Once labeled, that label hardens and spreads across systems, including immigration enforcement, where alleged gang affiliation is already used to deny relief and accelerate removal.
Florida’s biker world needs to be understood here. Florida has one of the largest and most visible motorcycle communities in the United States. Riding is year-round. Club life is public. Charity runs, memorial rides, toy drives, disaster relief, and benefit events happen constantly. Florida bikers are not hidden. They are visible, active, and woven into everyday community life.
Club life in Florida is not casual. It is structured, disciplined, and rooted in codes of respect and responsibility. Patches are earned. Symbols carry history. Brotherhood is not a slogan, it is a commitment. Clubs here include veterans, tradesmen, business owners, parents, grandparents, immigrants, and multi-generational families of every race and background. This diversity has always existed, even when outsiders refuse to see it.
Because of that visibility, Florida bikers already live under heightened scrutiny. Many know what it feels like to be watched at gas stations, traffic stops, restaurants, bike nights, and charity events. Profiling is not theoretical for this community. It is lived.
That is why laws that rely on appearance, association, language, and symbolism land differently here. They don’t just regulate crime. They reshape daily life. They change how people gather, how they speak online, how they mourn, how they show up to serve their communities. Fear enters spaces that were built on trust.
This is exactly why the United States Constitution exists. The First Amendment protects speech, expression, and association because the Founders understood how easily governments punish people for who they are rather than what they do. The Fourth Amendment protects against suspicion without evidence. The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee due process and equal protection. Profiling violates all of these by turning identity into guilt.
The Founders lived this reality themselves. They were labeled radicals and criminals by the Crown. They organized in groups, used symbols, published speech that made society uncomfortable, and were surveilled. Had laws like this existed then, many of them would have met the criteria. The Constitution was built to protect people exactly like that.
We must also talk honestly about the human mind. Bills like this are not just legal tools. They are psychological tools. Humans rely on shortcuts under fear and authority. Symbols become threats. Groups become danger. When the law legitimizes these shortcuts, it trains people to stop seeing individuals and start seeing categories. Profiling does not require hatred. It only requires permission.
This is why moral code matters so deeply. A law that depends on perfect judgment in an imperfect system is not a safe law. Without humanitarian restraint, broad discretionary power will be misused, not always maliciously, but predictably. Justice must be handled case by case. That belief is not radical. It is foundational.
John Adams understood this in the 1770s when he defended British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. He believed justice required evidence, restraint, and hearing all sides, even when the public demanded punishment. He understood that prosecution driven by outrage destroys legitimacy. Humanity had to guide justice, or justice ceased to exist.
We are already seeing these dynamics in immigration enforcement today. Entire groups are framed as threats. Long before modern immigration policies associated with figures like Stephen Miller, biker communities across the United States were already being profiled based on cuts, colors, and association. Ethnic and racial profiling existed long before it became politically convenient. Speech and appearance are twisted into suspicion. Due process begins to feel optional. This did not happen by accident. It happened through repetition, saturation, and psychological manipulation that trained the public to accept shortcuts instead of asking harder questions.
The United States has passed similar laws before. The PATRIOT Act normalized mass surveillance. Civil asset forfeiture punished people without convictions. Gang enhancement statutes in California, Texas, Illinois, and New York punished affiliation over conduct and later required reform. Stop-and-frisk was justified as public safety and ultimately ruled unconstitutional after years of harm.
Globally, the pattern is the same. In Russia, authoritarianism began with legal consolidation and labeling groups as threats. In China, broad public-order laws justify surveillance based on association. In parts of Europe, motorcycle clubs have faced blanket bans on patches, clubhouses, and association under anti-gang laws relying on collective punishment.
These are not comparisons meant to inflame. They are warnings. Democracies republics erode through normalization. A definition here. A stigma there. Once profiling is accepted for one group, it becomes available for others.
Personal note. I want to speak plainly, especially to motorcycle clubs. We are already dealing with profiling. I have personally witnessed bikers trying to follow legal processes on U.S. soil be profiled because of skin color and speech, then have that profiling twisted into alleged “gang activity” simply because they wore a patch. This did not start with one administration or one policy. Long before today’s immigration framework, clubs and ethnic communities were already being treated differently, while privilege shielded others from scrutiny.
As a woman, a humanitarian, and someone who believes deeply in the U.S. Constitution, I cried. I cried for those individuals. I cried for our constitutional soul. No human being should be treated this way on our soil. This is not the way.
This bill feels like another layer of muck leading to deeper erosion if we stay silent. I have started calling Florida representatives. I am only one person, but I need many of you to do this as well. If we do not speak now, we leave the next generation of bikers and club brothers a country where identity is treated as probable cause.
Read the bill yourself
Contact the Florida Senate.Switchboard: 850-487-5229Find your Senator: https://www.flsenate.gov/Senators
Awareness is not fear. It is responsibility.
If this work matters to you, please consider supporting it. Bikers Across The Nation is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. This research takes time, travel, and countless hours in libraries, archives, and listening spaces. Donations support education, outreach, and public awareness so we can continue connecting law, history, psychology, and humanity, and work toward bringing humanity back to our soil in the United States.
Thank you Insane Throttle - Hollywood and his Ol'Lady for bring this to my attention. Please follow their YouTube and Instagram pages.
We are planning a small, intentional meeting in Hampton Roads.
This is not a rally, a protest, or a debate. It’s a conversation.
I want to sit down with people who care about community, humanity, and connection and talk about how we actually engage one-on-one with people who are different from us. Not online. Not through crowds or mob energy. Face-to-face. Human to human.
What I do, both inside and outside of different communities, is rooted in listening, respect, and honest dialogue. Right now, that connection piece feels more important than ever. Too much of our society is being driven by noise, fear, and groupthink instead of understanding.
This meeting will be about asking simple but hard questions:
How can we be better human beings in our own communities?
How do we talk instead of attack?
How do we resist mob rule and choose personal responsibility instead?
The space will be private and respectful. This is a listening space, not a performance space.
If you’re interested in sitting down and having a real conversation, message me. More details to come.
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