Dear Friend,
Week three of Florida’s 2024 Legislative Session is done, which means we’re now one-third of the way through the nine-week session.
We’re really in the thick of it now. Dozens of bills are quickly moving through the process – many that are quite good but lots more that are, sadly, really bad.
This week alone we saw bills move forward to help homeowners make repairs after a hurricane without losing their insurance and to assist formerly incarcerated people trying to start new professional careers. But we also saw bills advance to cut more Floridians off from unemployment, weaken child-labor laws, deny the impacts of racial and gender injustice, and prevent LGBTQ+ Floridians from accessing life-saving healthcare. The Legislature even started working on bills to private more public schools and give Ron DeSantis more military power.
You’ll find an update on all those bills – and many more – below.
Please don’t ever hesitate to contact me or my office if you got questions or thoughts about these issues or any others. And please connect with us on our social-media channels – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube – where we’re constantly posting important updates as they happen.
Onward,
Rep. Anna V. Eskamani
The Florida House passes social media ban
The Florida House of Representatives passed a couple of big bills last week – including House Bill 1, which would ban Floridians under the age of 16 from using social-media platforms.
We all know that social media use can sometimes have negative impacts on kids, particularly when it comes to issues of cyberbullying or the promotion of unhealthy body images.
But social media can also provide safe and affirming spaces for kids, too – particularly for LGBTQ+ kids or other folks who might be struggling to find supportive communities in their schools or elsewhere in their everyday lives.
In addition to likely being unconstitutional, a total ban on access simply goes too far. I and a few others tried to make this bill better – such as by allowing social media use with parental consent or allowing access to kids ages 13 and up. But all of those amendments were rejected.
The sponsors were also unwilling to answer even basic questions about the impacts of their bill – such as which social media platforms would be impacted. So in the end I voted against HB 1.
Watch my questions from the House floor on HB 1.
This isn’t over yet, though. The bill still has to go through the Florida Senate, where I’m hopeful folks will approach the problem with a bit more nuance.
The Florida House also passed House Bill 3, which would require adult websites to use age-verification software and deny access to anyone in Florida under the age of 18. That bill still needs to go through the Senate, too.
The latest on insurance legislation
Let’s start with the most important economic issue in Florida right now: The property insurance crisis.
We saw a few insurance bills start to move this past week – some good, some bad. One of the good ones is Senate Bill 1104, which would help Floridians whose homes or businesses are damaged during a hurricane by preventing their insurance companies from canceling their policies before they have a chance to make repairs.
The bill passed the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee by a unanimous vote last week, even though a bunch of insurance industry lobbyists testified against it. The House version of the bill (House Bill 1149) hasn’t been given a hearing yet, though.
House Bill 293 passed the House Civil Justice Subcommittee. This one would require homeowners’ associations and condominium associations to establish guidelines for owners who want to install hurricane-protection equipment like storm shutters, metal roofs or backup generators. The associations would then have to allow owners to make those upgrades, as long as they followed the association guidelines.
And House Bill 1191 passed the House Insurance & Banking Subcommittee. This bill would take away “assignment of benefit” rights for customers of surplus lines insurance companies – a higher-priced type of insurance with unregulated rates. It’s meant to make it harder for a policyholder to sue their insurer over a disputed claim. Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature already took so-called “AOB” rights away from customers of standard property insurance companies.
Check out this slide deck we made that reviews property insurance bills that have been filed. Please consider contacting your State Representative and State Senator and ask that they prioritize property insurance reform. You can do so via this link: bit.ly/FLRep
A new attack on unemployment benefits
Just a couple of years ago, my office literally helped tens of thousands of Floridians from all across the state navigate Florida’s broken unemployment system during the COVID-19 crisis. This was an intentional catastrophe: Former Gov. Rick Scott and corporate lobbying groups like the Florida Chamber of COmmerce intentionally broke our unemployment system, so that working Floridians would receive fewer unemployment payments – and businesses would pay lower unemployment taxes.
Well, now the Florida Chamber of Commerce is trying to make the state’s unemployment insurance system even worse for Florida workers. The chamber is pushing Senate Bill 1260, which would make it even harder for workers to file benefit claims – and even easier for the DeSantis administration to disqualify people.
The bill does a bunch of stuff. But the big things include forcing workers to complete a cumbersome “skills assessment” before they can file a claim – something the federal government has already said is illegal – and also forcing workers to fill out at least one job application every week *in person* to continue receiving benefits.
The bill passed the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee. The House version of the bill (House Bill 1289) hasn’t started moving yet.
Bills to weaken child-labor laws keep moving
Bills to weaken Florida’s child-labor laws also continue to move quickly through Tallahassee.
House Bill 49, which would allow companies to make some high school students work full-time hours while they are in school, passed the House Commerce Committee.
And House Bill 917, which would let homebuilders use teenagers on residential construction sites, passed the House Choice & Innovation Subcommittee.
More bills that harm working families and lower-income Floridians
Cutting workers off from unemployment insurance and putting high-school kids on 40-hour workweeks aren’t the only anti-worker or anti-poor people bills moving this session. Here are a few others that moved last week:
- Senate Bill 742 would allow construction companies to pay lower wages when they build public-works projects, by erasing local “living wage” and “responsible wage” laws that have been enacted in many cities and counties across Florida.
- Senate Bill 1336 would cut funding for legal aid programs that provide civil attorneys to people in poverty. It would do this by allowing banks to pay lower interest rates on certain types of legal industry accounts, which is Florida’s main funding source for legal aid.
- House Bill 1347 and Senate Bill 1436 would let some predatory lenders nearly double the interest rates they charge their customers.
- House Bill 1365 starts to criminalize homelessness in Florida by forbidding cities and counties from allowing unhoused people from sleeping on public property.
- Senate Bill 1492 would stop local communities from ensuring that farmworkers, construction workers and other Floridians working outside in extreme heat have basic safety protections like access to cool drinking water.
- Senate Bill 1746: This bill expands an awful anti-union law that Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through the Legislature last year
Florida’s newest culture wars
Of course, we’re also seeing more attempts to deny racial and gender inequities, erase LBTQ+ community and even celebrate racism.
For instance, House Bill 465 would allow the DeSantis administration to target students at Florida universities and colleges who speak out in support of Palestine, by raising their tuition rates and revoking any financial aid they might be receiving. This is an incredibly anti-free speech bill that clearly violates the U.S. Constitution. But it still passed the House Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee, one of the committees I serve on.
Watch my testimony against HB 465
At the same time, Senate Bill 1372 continues the attacks on academic freedom that we’ve seen through the so-called Stop WOKE Act in 2022 and Senate Bill 266 last year, by trying to prevent education-prep professors from talking about the impacts of racism or sexism. That one passed the Senate Education Postsecondary Committee.
Then there’s Senate Bill 1122 would stop local communities from removing statues honoring Confederate generals and other defenders of slavery. The bill, which passed the Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability Committee, would even let Gov. Ron DeSantis remove locally elected city or county leaders who vote to take down a Confederate statue.
There’s also House Bill 1639, which is another attempt to deny life-saving healthcare to transgender Floridians. It would require health insurance companies that cover gender-affirming care to both charge higher prices and also provide the same coverage for so-called “detransitioning” services, which is not based in science and not any kind of “healthcare” at all. The same bill, which passed the Select Committee on Health Innovation, would even forbid Floridians from using the gender with which they identify on their driver license.
I temporarily joined that Health Innovation Committee as an “ex-officio” member to replace a colleague who couldn’t be there.
Watch my debate against HB 1639.
And there’s House Bill 833, which would prohibit local police departments from participating in programs like the Safe Space Initiative, which provides training to businesses about how to support victims of hate crimes, particularly in the LGBTQ+ community. This bill passed the House Local Administration, Federal Affairs & Special Districts Subcommittee.
Finally, the most absurd bill of the entire session might be House Bill 1301, which tries to turn transportation planning into a culture war. This bill – which comes straight from Gov. Ron DeSantis – would cut off funding for airports and seaports that follow public health guidance from the federal government. It would forbid the state department of transportation from considering carbon emissions in its long-term project planning. It would even stop local transit agencies from sponsoring booths at local Pride events.
This is so silly it might be laughable – except this stupid piece of legislation could end up costing Floridians billions of dollars in federal money for transportation.
I serve on the House Transportation & Modals Subcommittee, which heard this bill.
Changing the criminal legal system – for both good and bad
There are many criminal legal system bills moving through the system.
For example, big box stores like Target are pushing House Bill 549 and Senate Bill 1222, which impose long prison sentences on shoplifters – even folks who steal something as small as a couple of candy bars. Both bills passed committees last week.
Police unions and prosecutors are lobbying for House Bill 1657, which would give more protections to officers who engage in brutality – even when those officers are making an arrest or detention that they know is illegal. They’re also lobbying for Senate Bill 184, which would make it harder for bystanders to record police officers who are arresting or assaulting someone. Both of those bills passed committees last week, too.
But we also saw some good restorative justice bills pass committees last week, too. Like House Bill 133, which would forbid barber and cosmetology licensing boards from denying someone a license solely because of a crime they committed years ago and would also require those boards to recognize industry training credits that formerly incarcerated people earned in prison. And House Bill 751, which should make it easier for formerly incarcerated people to obtain occupational licenses in other fields, too.
A new education privatization plot
Unfortunately, we saw a really dangerous school-privatization bill start to move forward last week.
The bill is House Bill 109, which passed the House Choice & Innovation Subcommittee. It would make it easier to get a traditional public school converted into a privately operated charter school – by eliminating a law that says at least 50 percent of the teachers at a school must approve the conversion.
The bill would also allow a local city council to initiate a conversion, even if the local school district opposes it. And it would force some school districts to provide free property to charter schools.
Lobbyists for for-profit charter school companies like Charter Schools USA are all registered on this bill.
Authoritarian watch
The House Local Administration, Federal Affairs & Special Districts passed House Bill 1551, a really scary bill that would allow Gov. Ron DeSantis to use his personal military force – the Florida State Guard – anytime and anywhere he wants.
Meanwhile, the Senate Rules Committee passed Senate Concurrent Resolution 324 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 326, which would have Florida join a national effort to force a nationwide constitutional convention. These resolutions have already passed through the Florida House and they’re part of an organized campaign led by far-right, corporate-funded groups that convene a convention at which states could propose amendments like a total abortion ban or a nationwide sales tax.
A House committee also passed House Bill 57, a ploy by politicians in Tallahassee to impose 12-year term limits on independently elected city and county leaders. Another House committee passed House Bill 1195, which would make it harder for independently elected city and county leaders to charge sufficient property taxes. And a Senate committee passed Senate Bill 632, which would allow people to shoot Florida black bears.
A grab-bag of bills
Lastly, here’s a quick list of some other bills of interest that passed committees last week:
- House Bill 557, a bill to make it easier to build tiny homes
- House Bill 1071, a bill that would ban the production or sale of lab-grown meat
- House Bill 1187, a bill that would create a task force to study ways to capture and store carbon
- House Bill 1641, a bill that would make it even harder for cities and counties to address pollution caused by plastic bags, plastic bottles and styrofoam food containers
DeSantis appointees try to cancel sociology courses in Florida universities
Lastly, outside of the Legislature, the Ron DeSantis-appointed Board of Governors formally voted last week to eliminate sociology as a core course option in Florida’s public universities.
At the very same meeting, the BOG also approved a rule prohibiting public universities from spending public funds on programs that promote and support diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
This meeting was held in Tallahassee, so I raced over shortly before the House started that day’s session so I could add my voice to all the courageous folks testifying against these terrible decisions.
Watch my comments to the Board of Governors.
The week in pictures
