As of 6 February, people in Florida are no longer be able to take driver’s license examinations in any language other than English, the Florida department of highway safety and motor vehicles (DMV) said in a statement.

Before the change, exams for noncommercial driver’s licenses were offered in multiple languages, including Spanish, Haitian Creole and Portuguese, while the commercial learner’s permit and commercial driver’s license knowledge exams were both offered in English and Spanish. Now all driver’s license knowledge and skills testing will be conducted in English.

“Florida’s decision to administer driver’s license services only in English is a harmful and unnecessary barrier that will disproportionately impact immigrant communities and other Floridians with limited English proficiency,” Keisha Mulfort, deputy director of communications for the ACLU of Florida, said in a statement. “Access to a driver’s license is not a luxury; it is essential for everyday life, including getting to work, taking children to school, attending medical appointments and safely meeting basic family needs.”

According to the Florida DMV, language translation services will no longer be allowed for knowledge or skills examinations, as was customary. Printed exams in languages other than English will also be removed.

“Thirty per cent of households in Florida speak a non-English language, meaning this haphazard state decision will have sweeping consequences for millions of families,” Mulfort wrote. “Florida’s government should be working to ensure public services are accessible to the communities it serves, not using language as a gatekeeping tool that isolates people and makes daily life harder. Every Floridian deserves equal access to essential services, regardless of the language they speak.”

Adriana Rivera, the communications director for the Florida Immigrant Coalition, said that the decision is “ill-advised, to say the least”. Rivera said the decision is making it very difficult for US citizens who don’t speak English, including the large percentage of Puerto Ricans in the state, because they were born and raised in a territory where Spanish is the primary language.

“It’s beyond my comprehension how they are doing this, and it’s obvious that they have not thought about all Floridians,” Rivera said. “Puerto Rico is just one part of the equation, a very important part of the equation, but we have US citizens at various degrees of their English-language learning journey.”

Mulfort said that making state services accessible only to English speakers “creates a two-tiered system” in which “some Floridians are able to navigate public life with ease, while others are pushed into confusion, delay and vulnerability. This kind of policy does not increase safety or efficiency. It increases hardship and deepens inequity.”

Compounding this change is the fact that Florida also lacks sufficient public transportation. Seminole county recently eliminated longstanding fixed bus routes and replaced them with an on-demand service available via a smartphone app. In Orlando, the fastest-growing metro in the country, buses are often late – or do not arrive at all.

“If we were talking about a state that had invested in public transportation, like we should have, then that is a completely different conversation,” Rivera said. “But you’re talking about a state where you need to drive everywhere, where even in towns and cities where you could potentially walk to a pharmacy or grocery store, a lot of times [they] don’t even have the sidewalks even if the business is not far.”

Florida is not the only state to limit the accessibility of driver’s licenses, though it does go further than many other states in that it does not provide an alternative for non-English speakers.

South Dakota, for instance, only offers the skills and driving portion of the exam in English, though the driver’s license application, study materials and written exam are available in Spanish. Alaska and Wyoming’s driver’s license knowledge exams are only available in English, though applicants may bring a translator or interpreter.

Oklahoma only offers the state’s online written exam in English. This year, Alabama introduced a bill that would make it so that tests are only available in English, and a similar bill failed in committee last year in Tennessee.

“It’s such a huge ripple effect.” Rivera said. “You know people are going to drive no matter what. People need to live their lives; they are going to drive. But then you’re going to criminalize them for going to take their grandmother to their doctor’s appointment or for going to take their child to soccer practice and that’s not fair.”