We’re now two-thirds of the way through the 2024 Florida legislative session, and, as the saying goes, the writing is on the wall on some pieces of legislation that likely won’t pass.
With the caveat that anything is possible in terms of some of these measures, the Florida Phoenix took a look at some high-profile bills that have been approved by at least one legislative committee in the state House or Senate yet aren’t doing well and could likely die in the Legislature. The 2024 regular session is slated to end on March 8.
Here’s what’s happening:
Guns
Republicans in both chambers of the Legislature this year introduced proposals to repeal certain provisions of 2018’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. Those provisions came out of the Feb. 14, 2018 Parkland school shooting that killed 17 students and staff.
There’s HB 1223, which would lower the age to buy a long gun in Florida from 21 to 18. As was the case in the 2023 session, the House bill is moving, but it’s not going anywhere near Gov. Ron DeSantis, who would have to sign such a law. There is no Senate version.
Another GOP gun repeal measure also looks doubtful. The proposal (HB 17) would require the mandatory waiting period for all firearm purchases to expire after 3 days, regardless of whether a background check has been completed. This measure has support in the House, and DeSantis told CNN last month while on the presidential campaign trail that, “I think the background checks should be instant.” (The governor has suspended his presidential campaign.)
However, the Senate version has not been pursuing the measure. And Second Amendment advocates are not at all pleased by the developments.
“You have a Republican House Speaker state that he and his Republican colleagues don’t have an ‘appetite’ to debate and vote on open carry. You have a Republican Senate President state that repealing the under-21 purchase ban is a ‘non-starter’ Yet both have the nerve to campaign that they’re pro-gun,” says Luis Valdes, Florida state director of Gun Owners of America (GOA).
Valdes and other Second Amendment aficionados are also steamed at DeSantis for failing to push for an open carry law which he said he supported a year ago. That measure (HB 1619) was introduced at the beginning of the 2024 session by Hillsborough GOP Rep. Mike Beltran but was immediately dismissed by Republican leadership last month.
“GOA got him on record where he said he ‘absolutely’ supports open carry,” Valdes says. “Well, actions speak louder than words and the governor’s inaction is deafening.”
Climate Change
On the climate change front, advocates have been up in arms about a proposal (SB 1126) that would expand upon a ban on local governments from imposing regulations against single-use plastic items like bags, bottles, cups and cardboard.
The measure had passed in one Senate committee but was postponed two weeks ago in the Senate Community Affairs — a committee not scheduled to meet again this session. In the House, the bill got through one committee but it has not yet moved further.
“Our concern was that this bill would likely mean more trash and plastic pollution ending up in our waterways and oceans,” said Hunter Miller, the field campaigns manager for the Southeast for Ocean told the Phoenix earlier this month. “The state has already taken most of the tools out of the toolbox for local governments to address plastic pollution and this bill would further restrict communities from implementing sensible ordinances to protect their neighborhoods, beaches, parks and wildlife. We need real leadership on this issue, not efforts to thwart communities to be a part of the solution.”
Flags and monuments
Fort Myers-based Republican Sen. Jonathan Martin was sponsoring two of the most high-profile “anti-woke” bills of this session (both carried over from 2023): a proposal (SB 1120) that called for preventing some government entities from erecting or displaying certain flags on buildings (that was widely interpreted as a ban on the Pride flag), and a measure (SB 1122) which would prevent local governments from removing or relocating historical monuments.
Those two proposals blew up on the same night on Feb.6, when they were both placed in committees that were taking place at the same time and whose meetings were going deep into the evening.
Forced to make a decision, Martin chose to temporarily postpone the flags bill in the Senate Governmental Oversight and Accountability (which will not meet again this session) so he could then advocate for his bill on protecting historical monuments.
In what was perhaps the most volatile committee meeting of the session, the bill advanced unanimously among all five Republicans on the committee, with all three Democrats on the committee leaving their seats before the final vote. While Senate President Kathleen Passidomo says she doesn’t have a problem with the bill at all, calling it “benign,” she has decried how both the left and the right have “weaponized” the issue, making its future murky.
The likely death of the flag bill in the ’24 session was hailed by Janelle Perez, the executive director of LPAC, a political organization dedicated to electing LGBTQ women and nonbinary people to public office.
“Being someone born and raised in Miami and knew I was part of the LGBTQ community, I always felt that I wouldn’t be able to get married and have a family in Miami because it wasn’t very welcoming,” she told the Phoenix last Friday. “But flash forward to 2020, I was part of the Miami Dade County LGTBQ advisory board and I was there when Mayor Daniella Levine Cava raised our Pride flag, and for me at that moment — I’m a mom…for me to be able to see something like that go up in a place that I never thought I would be welcome, meant a lot and unfortunately a bill like this marginalizes the already unfortunate part of our community – the young people who don’t feel welcome in Florida for anything.”
Then there’s a proposal from Orange and Seminole County House Republican Doug Bankson’s (HB 1639) that would require health insurance companies providing gender-affirming care for transgender people to also cover therapies to affirm a person’s sex assigned at birth — otherwise known as conversion therapy.
While the measure passed two of its three assigned committees in the House, it has been sitting in the Infrastructure Strategies Committee for nearly three weeks now. But no Senate version has been filed to date.
Elections/Democracy
Florida is one of only four states in the nation that require that citizen-initiated measures be approved by more than a majority of voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
But for several years now, GOP House Republicans have attempted to raise the minimum threshold to pass a constitutional amendment from 60% to 66.67%, and a resolution (HJR 335 ) that would ultimately go to the voters to decide has passed through one committee this session in the House. However, it needs to get through two more committee hearings and it lacks a Senate equivalent.
Speaking to reporters on Monday morning, Democratic House Leader Fentrice Driskell commented on several of the above-mentioned bills which appear for the moment to be stalled.
“While it’s my hope that these bills would just, you know, ride off into the sunset and we won’t have to deal with them, I’ve been around here long enough and for enough legislative sessions to know that sometimes bills come back when there’s some trading of priorities that has to be done,” she said.
Meanwhile, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of bills that were filed ahead of the Florida legislative session that haven’t received a hearing in either chamber of the Legislature.
Many of them were filed by Democrats. The chairs of the various committees in the House and Senate have a large influence on what gets on the legislative agenda, and all of those committees this year are headed by Republicans, as the GOP continues to have supermajorities in both chambers.