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 2020 legislative session begins January 14, 2020, and ends sixty-days later March 13, 2020. During this legislative session, we will work on a broad range of issues including, but not limited to: criminal justice, free speech, reproductive freedom, immigrants’ rights, and LGBTQ+ rights.
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 130,000 members and supporters in Florida and more than 1.6 million supporters nationwide, we advance this mission through litigation, advocacy, and education. Visit our webpage to read about our 2020 legislative priorities.
Do you want to help protect civil rights and civil liberties in Florida? You can also check out our Legislative Advocacy Toolkit, sign up to receive email updates and action alerts, volunteer with us, and return to this web page regularly to stay up to date on our legislative priorities in 2020.
We are monitoring hundreds of bills that span the breadth of the ACLU’s policy concerns. Below is a representative sample of several of the bills that have been filed that we will be actively working on throughout this legislative session. The list includes bills that we will proactively attempt to pass and those that we will actively defend against. This list is not all-inclusive, and instead is a representative sample of bills that either pose significant threats to civil rights and civil liberties, or that create opportunities to advance constitutional and civil rights.
Authorizing the resentencing and release of certain nonviolent offenders under the age of 25 who meet certain criteria; precluding eligibility for a sentence review for young adult offenders who previously committed, or conspired to commit, specified offenses.
Allows a judge to exercise discretion to depart from the strict mandatory sentence under certain circumstances; increases drug weight thresholds for certain offenses; allows for incarcerated individual to petition for resentencing.
Allows judges to impose sentences commensurate with the offense; eliminates one-size-fits-all harsh mandatory sentence lengths.
Ends driver license suspensions for failure to pay court fees and fine; revises payment plan and inability to pay determinations.
Ends driver license suspensions for failure to pay court fees and fine; revises payment plan and inability to pay determinations.
Removes references to state attorney's discretion to direct file juvenile; revises discretionary direct file criteria; provides for opportunity for judicial hearing to reverse direct file; revises provisions concerning housing of children held in detention.