The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, legal and advocacy 501(c)(4) organization and freedom's watchdog in the Sunshine State.
Florida's 2021 legislative session officially begins March 2, 2021, and ends sixty-days later on April 30, 2021, although legislators will also hear bills in January and February 2021 during their interim committee weeks. During this legislative session, we will work on a broad range of issues including, but not limited to: criminal justice, immigrants’ rights, voting rights, free speech, reproductive freedom, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Each year, ACLU-FL reviews over 3,000 bills introduced in the Florida Legislature for civil liberties implications, identifying those bills that we are going to advocate for or against and developing strategies accordingly.
We educate legislators and the public about ACLU positions, draft legislation on priority issues, lobby on bills affecting civil liberties, testify or arrange for testimony on bills, and build coalitions to pursue pro-active legislative initiatives or battle anti-civil liberties legislation. In addition, Florida legislators and their staff often ask us for analysis on pending bills.
The ACLU of Florida is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to protecting and strengthening the civil rights and liberties of all Floridians. As a nonprofit membership organization with over 180,000 members and supporters in Florida and more than 1.8 million supporters nationwide, we advance this mission through litigation, advocacy, and education.
Do you want to help protect civil rights and civil liberties in Florida? Sign up to receive email updates and action alerts, volunteer with us, follow us on facebook and twitter and return to this web page regularly to stay up to date on our legislative priorities in 2021.
Check out our legislative advocacy toolkit which contains specific information on best practices for legislative advocacy.
Bill Tracking
We are monitoring hundreds of bills that span the breadth of the ACLU’s policy concerns. Below are just a few of the many bills that we will be actively working on throughout this legislative session.
Adding sexual orientation and gender identity as impermissible grounds for discrimination in public lodging establishments and public food service establishments.
Modernizes Florida elections and maximizes voter participation by making Election Day a paid holiday, expanding vote-by-mail, and instituting Same Day Voter Registration.