Florida lawmakers abolish cohabitation ban

Florida lawmakers say that couples living together without being married would no longer be breaking the law. The lawmakers recently sent a bill to the governor repealing the state's Reconstruction-era ban on cohabitation by unmarried couples.

According to Reuters, Florida's Reconstruction-era ban on cohabitation made it illegal to "lewdly and lasciviously" live together without getting married. This presumably differentiated between romantic couples sharing a bed and non-romantic roommates splitting the rent.

Sponsors also said that it is a law that is impossible to put into effect but risky to have written on the books. "You shouldn't have statutes that are not being enforced," mentioned a state Representative Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, a Tallahassee Democrat and bill sponsor. He also added, "You'd have to arrest a half-million people, if we enforced this."

The appeal to revoke the law leaves in place a section of the 1868 bill. This makes it an offence to engage "in open and gross lewdness and lascivious behaviour," regardless of marital status of the couple.

Dailymail UK reported that the Florida House already casted their votes with a result of 112-5 in an effort to abolish the state's largely unenforced restriction on cohabitation. The law heads now to the desk of Governor Rick Scott for further examination.

The repeal, moreover, garnered support from Florida lawmakers, with a unanimous vote in the State Senate and five dissenters in the House. Among them was Representative Jennifer Sullivan, which is a Republican from Mount Dora, who stated she "ran on a pro-family platform" and could not make a choice to legalize cohabitation.

Under the state's Reconstruction-era ban on cohabitation by unmarried couples that has been on the books since 1868, a man and a woman living together without getting married could be charged up to $500 and could be locked up in jail for 60 days. In a 2014 census data, there are about 438,000 unmarried male and female couples among the 7.3 million Florida households.  

Since Florida is one of the many states that still have a law making cohabitation of couples illegal, Florida lawmakers are putting their effort to invalidate the law. The law (SB 498) seeks to cancel all of the stature covering the married or unmarried men and women "engaging in open behavior that is gross lewdness and lascivious", as claimed by Fox40.

Meanwhile, the bill was sponsored by state Senator Eleanor Sobel, which is a Hollywood Democrat. If Florida's repeal on the law passes the Governor's congregate, only Mississippi and Michigan will be the holdouts on the laws requiring couples to marry before living together in the same roof.

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