TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Florida legislators will meet in Tallahassee on Tuesday to kick off the 2024 legislative session.
The state’s most prominent politician, Gov. Ron DeSantis, will make an appearance at the Florida State Capitol on Tuesday before shifting his focus to his struggling presidential campaign.
DeSantis plans to depart for Iowa after delivering his annual State of the State address. The session convenes just days before the Iowa caucus, which is largely viewed as a bellwether for what’s to come for the rest of the primary season.
Back in Florida, the Republican-dominated legislature will look at around 1,700 bills over the next 60 days, addressing issues like education, guns, pronouns and the state’s property insurance crisis.
Here are just a few of the bills to keep an eye on this legislative session:
Property and auto insurance
Many Florida residents, as well as lawmakers at the state and federal level, have called for more to be done to address the state’s property insurance crisis. Lawmakers declined to take up the issue when the legislature convened for a special session in November.
Several bills have been filed that aim to offer assistance to homeowners. A bill revising eligibility for Citizens Property Insurance, the state’s insurer of last resort, was referred to the Insurance and Banking Subcommittee and Commerce Committee on Nov. 30.
The budget bill unveiled by DeSantis last month also included $400 million in temporary tax relief for property insurance.
A bill filed in the Florida house aims to repeal the state’s “no fault motorist” law and would require additional liability coverage. DeSantis has vetoed a similar bill in 2021.
Education
An education bill stirred up controversy after it was discovered it would amend the state’s school recess policy. While that portion was scrapped last month, the 52-page bill has drawn criticism from education advocates both sides of the aisle.
If passed, the bill would do away with requirements for students to pass Algebra I and a 10th grade language arts exam in order to graduate from high school. The fiscal policy committee also voted unanimously to approve the changes, ending a decades-old testing policy implemented under Gov. Jeb Bush.
The bill would also allow children to pass third grade, even if they failed the required reading test, “if the parent determines promotion is in the best interest of the student.”
The Florida Senate will take up education bills concerning school funding, teacher pay and providing free lunch for students.
Labor laws
A law filed by a Tampa Bay area lawmaker would weaken child labor laws in the state. Florida law currently prohibits teenagers from working at certain times or for more than eight hours when there is school the next day. The bill would do away with those restrictions, as well as the requirement for a 30 minute break after four consecutive hours of work.
“Minors 16 and 17 years of age may be employed, permitted, or suffered to work the same number of hours as a person who is 18 years of age or older,” the bill’s text reads.
Another bill aims to protect outdoor workers from the grueling Florida heat. If passed, employers would be required to implement an “outdoor heat exposure safety program” and provide access to shade, water and first aid to workers.
A bill filed this week would bar employers from “taking action” against an employee for their “deeply held religious or biology-based beliefs, including a belief in traditional or Biblical views of sexuality and marriage, or the employee’s or contractor’s disagreement with gender ideology.” The bill would also ban transgender people from telling their employer their preferred name or pronouns “if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her sex.”
Firearms
A proposed bill in the Florida House of Representatives would undo a policy implemented by Gov. Rick Scott that upped the age requirement for purchasing firearms to 21. Scott signed the bill into law in the wake of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
If passed, the proposed law would revert the statute to the pre-2018 policy, which sets the minimum age to buy a long gun at 18, and 21 to purchase a handgun.
In the Florida Senate, a lawmaker is once again attempting to eliminate the state’s controversial “stand your ground” law. The bill removes language to the existing statute regarding one’s “duty to retreat” and added the following: “A person may not use deadly force in accordance with this subsection if the person knows that he or she can, with complete safety, avoid the necessity of using deadly force by retreating.”
The bill was referred to the Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice and the Fiscal Policy and Criminal Justice committees in October.
Health care
After Florida declined to accept federal funds expanding Medicaid eligibility for low-income residents last year, 2024’s heath care bills largely address issues other than affordability.
Proposed bills look to tackle the state’s health care worker shortage, offering education assistance and expanding grants and residency programs for medical students to incentivize them to remain in the state.
The latter bill, which is a whopping 234 pages, passed through the Health Policy committee unanimously and was referred to the Fiscal Policy committee.
The 2024 Florida legislative session begins on Tuesday.
Voting rights
A bill filed this week would make it more difficult for Floridians to vote by mail. Under the law, a qualified absent voter may vote by mail if on election day and during early in-person voting, the absent voter expects to be out of the county or in the hospital.
The bill would also require voters to request mail-in ballots for every election.
