What passed and failed this legislative session

Florida lawmakers put their stamp on 2024

By Samantha Morell

On March 12, 2024

The Florida Legislature ended its 2024 session last week, sending a slew of bills to the governor’s desk for his consideration. Following is what passed and what didn’t for some of the state’s most pressing topics.

Homelessness & mental health

A bill prohibiting camping and sleeping on public property throughout the state was passed, authorizing counties to set up designated encampments for their respective homeless populations.

Ron Book, chair of the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust, said the bill would have little effect on the county, which would not choose to invest in any form of a public encampment. He said the county’s priorities are affordable housing first and shelters second.

Whether the bill would cause an uptick in arrests of homeless people sleeping on public property is cause for concern, though Book said anyone arrested for trespassing as a result of the new regulation would be released from custody fairly quickly.

He added that the bill, which requires encampments be drug-free, does not address the underlying causes of chronic homelessness, which is often accompanied by mental health or substance abuse issues.

Another bill heading to the governor’s desk would in part advance Florida’s mental health system by modernizing standards for involuntary mental health treatment services – such as those given to patients who have been Baker Acted – and broadening the definition of licensed practitioners qualified to provide care. The bill includes a $50 million appropriation to reduce rates of recidivism and enhance access to care.

Policing & oversight

A bill prohibiting local independent oversight of police misconduct and complaints made against law enforcement officers successfully advanced. The Miami Times covered the topic last week when the bill’s passage seemed imminent, noting how the new regulation would require the dismantling of Miami-Dade County’s Independent Civilian Panel and the city of Miami’s Civilian Investigative Panel in their current forms.

ICP director Ursula Price told this publication that independent oversight of police could be transformed to abide by the new law, though it depends on what the county is willing to implement. The bill also allows the office of a sheriff, which Miami-Dade is due to elect this November, to implement its own board to review policy and procedure internally.

The bill will take effect in July 2024 if passed by DeSantis.

On the other hand, bills that would have required guards at a women’s prison in Ocala to wear body cameras died in both the House and the Senate. Lowell Correctional Institute has long been the site of sexual abuse, rape and violent mistreatment of prisoners; federal investigations and reports say these incidents are enabled by inadequate camera layouts within the facility.

Local labor laws

A bill banning certain local employment regulations has passed in both the House and the Senate and is now being sent to DeSantis for his approval. The bill would bar local governments from establishing their own minimum wage requirements or heat safety protections.

The latter prohibition would gravely affect workers in Miami-Dade County, which has been considering an ordinance requiring agricultural and construction companies to give their workers water and a 10-minute break in the shade every two hours when the heat index hits 95 degrees.

The new bill would not only prevent the county from establishing such an ordinance, it also postpones statewide heat requirements and yields the authority to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration until 2028.

The bill’s effective date is July 1, 2024, though Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has sent a letter to DeSantis urging him to veto the legislation.

Social media

A bill prohibiting social media access for children has also advanced and is now expected to receive DeSantis’s signature.

The bill – which was workshopped and revised after the governor expressed concerns over potential lawsuits against a former version of the legislation – would ban Floridians younger than 16 years old from social media platforms deemed “addictive,” characterized by “infinite scrolling,” livestreaming, auto-play features and push notifications. Teenagers 14 or 15 can still access the platforms with parental consent.

Opponents have voiced concerns for data privacy under the new legislation, which requires companies to make their platforms inaccessible to kids without specifically outlining age verification requirements.

Gun rights

A series of bills affecting gun rights in the state were either sidestepped or killed.

Both the House and the Senate attempted to remove a mandatory waiting period for people looking to obtain a firearm while a records check is conducted. The bills died in committee.

The same fate was given to a couple of companion bills that would have prohibited people from shooting across private lands and onto another’s residential property.

Other bills expanding gun rights, including one that would have allowed open carry and another that would have reduced the minimum age for firearm purchase from 21 to 18, also did not make it through.

Education

Sen. Shevrin Jones and Rep. Christopher Benjamin, both Democrats from Miami Gardens, introduced legislation to remove a public education requirement that sparked considerable backlash when the K-12 curriculum was revealed last July.

The curriculum requires that public schools teach middle school students “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

The legislators’ attempt to undo the provision failed, however, when both bills died without a hearing.

Another bill that would have authorized municipalities to convert public schools in their area to charter schools never made it out of the House.

Flag bans

Two pieces of legislation were filed in the House and Senate to prohibit governments from displaying any flag representing a political, racial, sexual or ideological viewpoint. Though they were widely interpreted as targeting the LGBTQ+ flag, they would in fact have banned a multitude of flags from being raised at public facilities. Both bills died in committee.

Voting processes

A joint resolution attempting to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments on statewide ballots to require support from two-thirds of voters never made it out of the Legislature, despite repeated attempts over the years to make such amendments more difficult to pass.

Another failed measure would have implemented runoff elections for primary candidates, which used to exist in Florida before they were done away with in 2002.

This piece was republished from The Miami Times.