Overtime in Tally? ⏰ The Session Encore No One Asked For
What you should know about Week 9 of Florida’s 2025 Legislative Session.
Hi Friends,
Well, we got through the full 60 days of Florida’s 2025 Legislative Session… sort of.
The regular session officially ended without a final budget, the one thing lawmakers are obligated to pass, thanks to bitter infighting between the House and Senate and a standoff with Gov. Ron DeSantis. Legislative leaders agreed to extend the session until June 6 to finish the budget and a few select bills. All other measures not already passed were “indefinitely postponed” as of midnight May 3.
In other words, aside from budget matters and one big development package, everything else is now considered either passed or dead.
This session was anything but normal. We saw the new House Speaker and Senate President openly defy the Governor, overriding vetoes, stripping executive powers, and even investigating the First Lady’s organization, Hope Florida. Tensions between the House and Senate themselves also boiled over, with priority bills held hostage and personal jabs flying. The final week descended into a confusing back and forth ping pong of bills and amendments between the two chambers. Case in point: on Friday (the supposed last day), bills and insults were bouncing between the House and Senate well into the night. It was chaotic, but that chaos had a silver lining: a lot of terrible bills were killed by session’s end, many more than in recent sessions. Advocates are breathing a sigh of relief. This was a historic blow to the right wing agenda.
Of nearly 2,000 bills filed, only 243 passed both chambers, an unusually low number that underscores just how much things got derailed.
Still, we can’t let our guard down yet. The extension means the door has been left cracked for last minute mischief. The House’s resolution to extend also limits additional business to just the budget and 14 bills, including Senate President Ben Albritton’s sprawling Rural Renaissance economic development package. That bill has such a broad title (“an act relating to community and economic development”) that it could be used as the perfect vehicle for harmful policies- meaning some of those bad ideas that died could be resurrected as amendments.
We’ll be watching closely. But for now, with the regular session behind us, let’s recap where things stand.
☑️ Bills That Passed
Despite the dysfunction, a handful of bills did squeak through in the final week, some good, but mostly bad. Here are the notable measures that survived the 2025 regular session:
HB 1205 – Attack on Citizen Led Ballot Initiatives: Implements new hurdles for citizen led constitutional amendments, including stricter petition rules and criminal penalties for unregistered paid petition circulators. In short, it will be much harder for voters to put issues on the ballot. This was one of Gov. DeSantis’s top priorities, passed at the 11th hour, and he quietly signed it within hours.
HB 209 – No Building in State Parks: Blocks any future construction of things like golf courses, hotels, or even pickleball courts in Florida’s state parks. This good bill was a direct rebuke to a DeSantis scheme last year to commercialize state parks, a plan he pulled back amid public outrage.
SB 700 – Big Agriculture Package: Prohibits adding fluoride to public drinking water supplies and bans plant-based products from being called meat, milk, eggs, etc.
SB 606 – No Due Process for Working Families: Allows hotel owners to evict families who live in their hotels without due process.
SB 1678 – Anti-BDS Expansion: This bill requires state investments to divest from, and state agencies to stop doing business with, any entities that boycott Israel. It even targets academic associations that support boycotts.
SB 118 – Presidential Libraries (Trump’s Library Bill): Preempts all local regulations on presidential libraries, reserving that authority to the state.
🪦The Graveyard
Now the good news: a ton of terrible bills died, thanks in part to public pressure, the hard work of advocates in the building, and the legislature’s own dysfunction. Here are the big ones that failed to pass, but keep in mind- with the extension of session, some of these could be resurrected as amendments to big rural development package:
Anti-Worker Agenda: Four major anti-labor proposals all bit the dust. Bills that would have rolled back child labor protections (HB 1225 / SB 918) , created a loophole to pay some workers below the $15 minimum wage (HB 541 / SB 676), slashed access to unemployment benefits (HB 1157 / SB 1238) , and even repealed Florida’s labor pool act (HB 6033 / SB 1672 ) all failed to clear the finish line. These attacks on workers’ rights never made it through the Senate, a huge relief for labor advocates, and a testament to their hard work this session.
Lawsuit Shield for Mosaic: A dream bill for mining giant Mosaic (SB 832) that would have shielded phosphate companies from lawsuits over pollution and radiation on former mining lands died after a chaotic back and forth between the House and Senate.
Union-Busting Bills: Several bills (HB 1217, HB 1387, SB 1328, and SB 1766) aimed at weakening public sector unions quietly died in committee. These included efforts to further restrict union dues collection and recertification for teachers and other public employees. None of them even got a committee vote, sparing Florida’s workers from another round of union-busting after last year’s fights.
Developer Free For All: SB 1118 would have gutted local control over land use and unraveled protections like county growth boundaries, even ones already approved by voters in Orange County.
Gutting Funding for Legal Aid: SB 498 / HB 173 would have overhauled Florida’s Legal Aid funding, by slashing interest on trust accounts that fund legal services for the poor. It passed the Senate but died in the House.
Criminalizing Healthcare: The House passed HB 1517, allowing parents to sue over the death of an “unborn child,” but failed in the Senate. For the second year in a row, this concept proved too extreme, even for the Florida Legislature.
Birth Control Ban for Minors: Perhaps one of the creepiest proposals, HB 1505 / SB 1288 would have required minors to get parental consent for any treatment of STIs and even for birth control prescriptions. It aimed to repeal longstanding privacy exceptions for teen health. Despite sailing through committees, it stalled at the end and did not pass.
Baby Olivia: Lawmakers tried to mandate showing an anti-abortion propaganda video (the misleading “Baby Olivia” fetal development cartoon) to public school students via HB 1255. The provision was removed from the final education package.
Voter Restrictions Package: A sweeping elections bill, HB 1381, that would have added new voter registration hurdles, including complicated citizenship verification processes, went out with a whimper.
Parkland Protections Rollback: An NRA backed push to lower the rifle purchase age from 21 to 18, undoing a key post Parkland gun law, met its doom in the Senate. The House passed it (HB 759), but the Senate showed no appetite for relitigating the 2018 school massacre reforms. Open carry and repealing red flag laws were similarly dead on arrival.
Anti “Woke” Culture War Bills: In a remarkable shift from previous years, a host of culture war bills went nowhere. The Legislature defeated every anti LGBTQ bill filed, including the Pride flag ban (HB 75 / SB 100). Bills attacking diversity programs in state agencies and local governments (like SB 1694 to ban DEI in contracting) never made it out of committee. Even a bill to protect Confederate monuments (SB 1816) died without a vote. Florida’s extremist culture warriors struck out this session.
Establishing the Office of Hope Florida: Amid growing controversy over Casey DeSantis’s Hope Florida initiative, lawmakers got cold feet about rubber stamping it. SB 1144 would have formally created a government “Office of Hope Florida” in the Governor’s domain. But with a brewing scandal over a suspicious funneling of $10 million in state funds, the bill died. In fact, House leaders even launched, then dropped, an investigation into Hope Florida’s finances.
🤡 Clown of the Week
For the last week of Florida’s regular Legislative Session, the prestigious “clown of the week” award must go to none other than Governor Ron DeSantis, who has experienced a spectacular collapse of influence in Tallahassee.
Only a year ago, DeSantis was riding high. Legislators eagerly rubber stamped almost anything he wanted, even ceding some of their own power to appease him. But oh, how the mighty have fallen.
The “tough guy” from Florida proved himself to be an uncharismatic, whiny loser on the campaign trail. After his presidential ambitions face-planted so badly that he became a national punchline, lawmakers in his own party decided they’ve had enough. DeSantis’s sway in the Capitol is now the weakest it’s been since he took office. The House and Senate basically spent the session swatting him away like an annoying fly.
To be clear, legislative leaders didn’t suddenly grow principled backbones. They just don’t see the point in obeying a lame duck governor who can’t help them politically anymore. Their attitude became: Do we have a real plan? No. But whatever we do, we’re gonna make sure it’s not what Ron wants. Petty? Perhaps. But it sure was fun to watch.
DeSantis raged as lawmakers overrode his vetoes, investigated his wife’s charity, and ignored his pet projects. By session’s end, almost none of the Governor’s priorities had passed. In fact, his only significant policy “win” was HB 1205, making citizen led ballot initiatives nearly impossible. Even that was more about Republican lawmakers sticking it to progressive causes than doing Ron a favor.
How did our “tough guy” Governor handle his lone victory? Like a true coward. He signed HB 1205 in secret, behind closed doors with zero fanfare, literally minutes after it hit his desk. No press conference, no TV cameras, no adoring crowd. He didn’t dare draw attention to this anti-democratic law because he knows just how deeply unpopular it is. This bill essentially codifies DeSantis’s own corruption into law. The Governor is happy to undermine our citizen led initiative process to protect his agenda, but he sure doesn’t want voters noticing. Thus the skulking, late night bill signing. What a profile in courage.
At the end of the day, Ron DeSantis’s grip on Florida’s government has withered. He’s simply a bully whose influence evaporated once his national star dimmed. Even his fellow Republicans are openly rolling their eyes at him now. For presiding over this train wreck of a session and his straight up cowardice, Governor DeSantis has more than earned the title of Clown of the Week.
👀 Not Over Yet
We may be mostly done, but we’re not out of the woods yet. The Legislature will be coming back in mid May for “overtime,” and we need to stay vigilant. In this extended session, lawmakers still have to finalize the budget and a big tax package, items that can attract last minute shenanigans.
More worrisome, as mentioned, is the Rural Renaissance bill (SB 110) that’s still alive. Because of its extremely broad scope, it could become a vehicle to sneak in provisions that died elsewhere. Language from some of those bad bills in our “graveyard” might be resurrected as amendments to the Rural Renaissance Bill. For example, we’ll be on high alert for any attempt to slip the Mosaic mining immunity or the plastic ban preemption back into play via this bill. Nothing is truly dead just yet.
The good news is, the House and Senate publicly limited the agenda for the extension. They know we’re watching, and we’ll need to keep the pressure up and shine light on any zombie provisions they try to push through in the final weeks.
In the meantime, take a moment to appreciate that many of this session’s worst ideas were stopped in their tracks. That happened because we spoke out, showed up, and made our voices heard.
We’ll be back with our full 2025 Session debrief soon, including a deeper dive into how these battles were won and lost, and what it all means for the future of Florida's working families.
Onwards and upwards,
Your Friends at Florida For All
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