Florida lawmakers considering a new law to increase the penalty for groping

Florida lawmakers are looking to increase the penalties for people who grope others. Currently, groping is just a misdemeanor, but under a new proposed law in Florida, it would jump to a felony.

Supporters of the bill want to see the change because most women say it happens too often, and the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

That could change if the so-called groping bill makes it to the governor’s desk.

You can go down a street and ask any woman have you ever been touched or groped? Too many of them say yes.

“I have,” said Mari Rose. Frances Depalma, Lehigh has too, “Yes. When I was young.”

“I was pushed and groped, pushed into a wall by a man, and I couldn’t get away, and I was pregnant,” said April Zuidema.

When someone touches a woman inappropriately, the memory sticks with them.

Zuidema said, “from then on, I always took an umbrella with a very large knob on the end of it, and when it happened a second time, I beat the snot out of the guy’s legs.”

“It made me feel violated, not respected, kind of disgusting after because I felt kind of guilty at first,” Mari Rose said.

Depalma said, “like you’re being used. Why do you think it’s all right to do that to me because I’m standing next to you in an elevator? Why? Or when you’re working and the boss comes over, and he’s rubbing your back, why?”

Right now, someone who gropes someone else faces a misdemeanor battery charge.

Representative Michael Gottlieb doesn’t believe that’s tough enough.

“I think every day of the week this should be a third-degree felony,” Gottlieb said.

A felony that could make people think before they reach out and touch.

Brian Nahas said, “there’s kind of a moral code that people don’t have a discernment and wisdom about things, and I think it’s a chance to wake them up.”

The Senate voted yes on the measure. The Souse is expected to follow suit. If governor DeSantis signs off on this bill, the law would go into effect July first.