The best and worst of Florida's 2025 session (so far)
Florida lawmakers just reeled in a rogue governor, at least a little bit.
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Florida lawmakers fled Tallahassee last week with a bunch of unfinished business, amid a budget-and-tax stalemate that forced them to extend their annual lawmaking session by another month and left a long list of issues in limbo.
But they also did something genuinely impressive before it all caved in.
Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature put some real guardrails around a governor of their own party — a governor who shattered all sorts of norms last year when he turned the power of state government against a pair of citizen-led constitutional amendments that would have overturned a statewide abortion ban and legalized marijuana.
They did so through a pair of bills that passed on Friday, during the final few hours of what was supposed to be the last day of the 2025 legislative session — and which, was, at least in theory, the deadline by which lawmakers had to finish up all their non-budget-related work for the year.
The first was House Bill 1445, which deals with a long-standing state law that forbids state officials from using their official authority to interfere with an election. It’s known as the “Little Hatch Act,” after the federal anti-corruption law it’s modeled upon.
You may recall that the DeSantis administration was sued several times during last year’s constitutional amendment campaigns, in lawsuits that accused the governor and some of his senior-most aides of violating the Little Hatch Act.
DeSantis responded by declaring himself to be above the law. Attorneys for the administration argued that the governor and his senior appointees were exempt from the Little Hatch Act and free to interfere with elections as they wished.
House Bill 1445 takes that argument away. It does so by erasing the exact language that DeSantis and his lawyers relied upon to make their immunity argument.
And that’s not all. The legislation also expands the Little Hatch Act to prohibit state employees from using their positions to solicit or pressure people into making campaign contributions.
Like when the governor vetoed regulations on the hemp industry after hemp industry lobbyist promised to donate to the governors anti-marijuana campaign. Or when his senior staffers squeezed lobbyists for contributions to his failed presidential bid while holding the threat of budget vetoes over them.
This is a genuinely good bill — one that substantially strengthens the state’s anti-corruption laws. And it passed by veto-proof margins: 37-0 in the Florida Senate and 97-1 in the state House, where the only vote against was cast by a back-bench Republican who is angling to become DeSantis’ next lieutenant governor.
Then there’s House Bill 1205.
Now, this one is admittedly a poisoned chalice. In fact, it is, I believe, the single worst piece of legislation passed this year — a bill that is designed to make it far harder for Floridians to go around the state’s gerrymandered Legislature and amend their own state constitution by petition drive.
But there’s also a little golden nugget buried deep inside the bill: A provision that explicitly forbids the governor from spending taxpayer money on political advertisements against proposed constitutional amendments.
The idea came from Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R-Fleming Island). And lawmakers say it is a direct response to the actions of the DeSantis administration, who spent something like $30 million of public money on ads against last year’s abortion rights and marijuana ballot measures — an estimated $20 million spent directly by state agencies plus another $10 million of Medicaid settlement funds funneled through the state’s Hope Florida Foundation.
“Let me tell you with certainty that the Bradley provision, which we included in this bill, was inspired by actions of individuals who worked for the state government and are part of the state government now,” Sen. Don Gaetz (R-Niceville), said while debating in favor of House Bill 1205 on the Senate floor. “And they engaged in behavior that will now be unlawful and will now be prevented, if we pass this bill.”
To be clear, both of these could have been better. The Senate refused to go along with a broader anti-corruption package passed by the House. The House, meanwhile, narrowed the Senate’s original prohibition on taxpayer-funded political ads.
But a minimum, these changes should strengthen the legal hand of anyone who tries to stop DeSantis — or any future governor — from repeating the same sort of abuses we saw during the 2024 elections.
The Top Five Bills of Session
House Bill 1445 — Public Officers and Employees
I already tipped my hand on this one. But House Bill 1445 does more than curb state government meddling in elections.
The legislation also requires the governor appointees put in charge of state universities and colleges to be either residents of Florida or school alumni. That could make it more difficult for Ron DeSantis — or any other governor — to sic entire slates of national ideologues onto schools with orders to turn the campuses into another political arm of the administration.
It also sets limits on how much high-ranking state officials and other political appointees can milk Florida taxpayers for travel expenses.
House Bill 913 — Condominium and Cooperative Associations
One of the tougher nuts Florida lawmakers had to crack this session was how to help condo owners across the state who are struggling to afford expensive structural inspections and building repairs mandated by a law passed in the aftermath of the 2021 condo tower collapse in Surfside.
House Bill 913, which passed the Legislature unanimously, makes changes meant to give condo associations more flexibility under that post-Surfside law — such as additional time to meet financial reserve requirements and the ability to finance repairs with lines of credit — without abandoning the new safety standards entirely.
House Bill 209 — State Land Management
Dubbed the “State Park Preservation Act,” this legislation was sparked by the statewide fury that erupted last year when the DeSantis administration tried to rush a plan into place allowing golf courses, lodges and other environmentally damaging facilities inside state parks. House Bill 209 sets strict new limits on what can be built in state parks — no golf courses allowed — and also ensures advance public notice before the administration changes a park management plan.
House Bill 1143 — Permits for Drilling, Exploration, and Extraction of Oil and Gas Resources
House Bill 1143 forbids oil- or gas-drilling along the rivers, swamps and wetlands that drain into Apalachicola Bay in North Florida, the heart of the state’s oyster industry. The legislation emerged after the DeSantis administration issued a draft permit to a Louisiana company seeking to drill an exploratory well in the Apalachicola River flood plain.
Senate Bill 472 — Education in Correctional Facilities for Licensed Professions
A bill about both criminal legal reform and economic freedom, Senate Bill 472 requires the state’s Department of Corrections to design job-training programs that inmates can take — such as courses necessary to become a barber — in which any credits they earn will count towards professional licensing requirements once they are released from incarceration.
It’s a small-but-important piece of legislation — partly because it puts another crack in monopolistic occupational licensing schemes that do more to keep competition out and prices high than they do to protect consumers.
The Bottom Five Bills of Session
House Bill 1205 — Amendments to the State Constitution
It was probably inevitable that Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature was going to pass a bill like House Bill 1205 after the abortion rights and marijuana petition drives came so close to passing last fall.
This is legislation that has been specifically engineered to sabotage future citizen-led amendments by tangling them up in red tape and hitting them with astronomical fines and criminal investigations if they trip over any of it. The legislation, which Gov. Ron DeSantis has already signed, even takes the unprecedented step of forbidding people from voluntarily collecting petitions unless they first register with the state and go through a government-mandated training program.
If there’s a silver lining here, it’s that the legislation appears vulnerable to legal challenges under both the Florida and U.S. Constitution (which, quite literally, forbids laws that restrict people’s right to petition the government.)
House Bill 1219 — Employment Agreements
Initially written by lobbyists for a billionaire-run hedge fund, House Bill 1219 will enable corporations to lock some of their employees into longer and stronger non-compete contracts — anti-competitive tools that suppress worker wages and stifle economic innovation. The good news is that the bill was substantially narrowed before it passed.
Senate Bill 700 — Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
Dubbed by boosters as the “Florida Farm Bill,” this package includes some of the most brazen rent-seeking we saw all session. The bill creates a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign for the beef industry while simultaneously imposing labeling restrictions on plant-based competitors meant to prevent them from using terms like “meat,” “milk” and “eggs” on their labels.
Senate Bill 700 also forbids local communities from adding fluoride to their water supplies and expands government control over private banking under the guise of anti-ESG activism. But it also includes provisions making it easier for agricultural companies to build housing for migrant farmworkers — which could make the bill vulnerable to a Ron DeSantis veto (Update: DeSantis announced Tuesday he will sign the bill into law.)
House Bill 1105 — Education
One of several last-minute education packages sprung on the night of session, House Bill 1105 is a sweeping piece of legislation. But it makes this list because of one provision in particular that paves the way for traditional public schools to be converted into privately managed charter schools — without the consent of the teachers who work at the school.
House Bill 1173 — Florida Trust Code
I will go to my grave arguing that this little bill, which passed by overwhelming margins and with little public debate, was an ugly bit of business. House Bill 1173 essentially clears the way for the Alfred I. duPont Charitable Trust and Nemours Children’s Foundation, which are based in Jacksonville, to begin cutting funding for children’s programs in Delaware — in defiance of their founder’s dying wish.
And the bills that didn’t pass…yet
Ultimately, the biggest story of this year’s session is what the Florida Legislature didn’t do — and I mean that in a good way. Because lawmakers left behind an an awful lot of awful legislation when they left town last week. (Compare this year’s list of bills with, say, the 2023 session.)
Now, it’s hard to say which of these bills died because lawmakers rejected them on the merits and which simply became collateral damage when negotiations on a new state budget collapsed.
And that’s a distinction that matters, because it’s very likely that legislative leaders will raise at least a few unexpected bills from the dead once they finally begin making progress on the next state spending plan.
Until then, though, here’s a very quick rundown of some of the worst bills that fell short of the finish line…at least for now.
Workers’ rights
An attempt to open up a loophole in Florida’s minimum wage law failed (House Bill 541 and Senate Bill 676). So did efforts to weaken the state’s child-labor laws (House Bill 1225 and Senate Bill 918) and eliminate workplace protections for day laborers and temp staffers (House Bill 6033 and Senate Bill 1672). Legislation imposing more barriers to obtaining unemployment insurance passed the House but crashed in the Senate (House Bill 1157 and Senate Bill 1238). And a bevy of union-busting bills went nowhere (House Bill 1217, House Bill 1387, Senate Bill 1328, and Senate Bill 1766).
Land use and development
A lobbying campaign led by homebuilding giant Lennar Corp. to let developers charge endless fees in residential subdivisions failed (House Bill 579 and Senate Bill 1118). So did attempts to undo a voter-approved rural boundary in Orlando (Senate Bill 1118) and authorize a controversial ethanol plant in Fernandina Beach (House Bill 579 and Senate Bill 1118). And lawmakers ultimately abandoned a proposal to make it easier for homebuilders to develop farmland surrounding cities amid a bipartisan backlash across the state (Senate Bill 1080).
Environment
Though both issues came about as close to passing as possible, lawmakers ultimately walked away from bills that would have protected mining giant Mosaic from lawsuits over radioactive contamination (House Bill 585 and Senate Bill 832) and completely prohibited local communities from regulating single-use plastics like bags, bottles and straws (House Bill 565, House Bill 1609, and Senate Bill 1822).
Commerce
The Legislature passed a bill written by lobbyists for car dealers — but only after stripping out part of the bill intended to crush competition from a new electric vehicle startup (House Bill 429). Lawmakers rejected an attempt by banking lobbyists to gut funding for Legal Aid and let banks have the money instead (House Bill 173 and Senate Bill 498). And they snuffed out a tax break sought by Philip Morris International…though Ron DeSantis may have given that gift to the Big Tobacco giant already (House Bill 785 and Senate Bill 1418).
Education
In the waning hours of session, Republican leaders in the state House rolled out a never-discussed proposal to dramatically expand the Florida’s controversial “Schools of Hope” charter school program (House Bill 1115). The Senate refused to go along with it, although the Senate’s refusal may have had more to do with a dispute over how far to go in reining in Ron DeSantis’ role in picking university presidents.
Healthcare
A bill to give to embryos and fetuses some of the same legal rights as living human children passed the House but not the Senate (House Bill 1517 and Senate Bill 1284). The same thing happened with legislation that would have forbidden healthcare providers from prescribing birth control or treatment for sexually transmitted infections to anyone under the age of 18 without permission from a parent (House Bill 1505 and Senate Bill 1288). And legislation intended to force middle and high school students to watch videos produced by an anti-abortion advocacy group was removed from a big education bill just before it passed (House Bill 1255).
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