Miami lawmakers are proposing new laws. Here's how they could affect you in Florida
Florida lawmakers have filed hundreds of bills ahead of the 2025 legislative session for the Florida House and Senate to consider starting on Tuesday, March 4.
Among the proposals filed by Miami-Dade lawmakers are new laws concerning immigrants. One would require that Florida companies verify their eligibility to work in this country. Another bill, if passed, would block state colleges from accepting undocumented students.
There are also bills filed by local leaders revolving around a Biscayne Bay boating accident that killed a high school girl, condo bills concerning association management and maintenance, and a bill that would prohibit discrimination in the public school system based on hairstyles.
KNOW MORE: Florida lawmakers are already proposing new laws for 2025. Take a peek at their plans
Here's a look at a handful of bills filed by Miami-Dade lawmakers and proposals focused on South Florida institutions.
Immigration laws
▪ E-verify employees. Jason Pizzo, minority Democratic leader in the Florida Senate whose District 37 covers swaths of Miami-Dade and Broward counties, filed a bill, SB 782, in February that would require an E-verify background check of potential hires for all companies. Corporations in violation would face fines that could range from $10,000 to $500,000 and the revocation of employer's licenses, depending on the frequency of violations and outcomes of undocumented workers' actions, effective on July 1.
Currently, companies with fewer than 25 employees avoid the state requirement to run employees through E-verify background checks for their immigration status.
READ MORE: One group is being spared from Florida's immigration crackdown: companies
'Florida Republicans have insisted that we are in an immigration crisis. We are,' Pizzo said in mid-February in a report published by Florida Politics. 'However, declaring a state of emergency, passing a few messaging bills, creating transport programs, and blowing millions of taxpayer dollars do not make us the 'toughest in the nation' on illegal immigration. Alas, we find ourselves at the end of a third 'Special Session' in three weeks because we just can't seem to get it right.'
▪ Undocumented students. Republican state Sen. Randy Fine of Brevard's District 19 filed SB 244 that would block state colleges and state universities with acceptance rates below 85% from accepting undocumented students. Schools that would fall under this bill include Broward College, Miami Dade College, Florida International University, University of Florida, Florida State University and the University of Central Florida.
'Is it fair to allow an illegal immigrant to take a spot that could be taken by a Floridian or an American? I would argue no,' Fine said in January, the Associated Press reported.
Condo bill
Republican Rep. Vicki Lopez of District 113, which includes Key Biscayne and Grove Isle, filed a nearly 100-page bill, HB 913, that refines condominium laws passed in the wake of the 2021 Champlain Towers South collapse in Surfside.
Lopez's proposal would bar the state-run property insurer Citizens from providing coverage to condominiums that fail to comply with new safety requirements for condos, and allow associations to take on loans or levy special assessments without the approval of the membership to pay for required building maintenance and repairs.
The bill would make it easier for condo boards to comply with the Legislature's new, costly requirements for condo building.
'It is contrary to the public policy of this state to limit the ability of an association to obtain the funds needed to perform necessary maintenance, repair or replacement of the condominium property as required by the milestone inspection report and structural integrity reserve study report in order to protect the health and safety of the unit owners and tenants of the property,' Lopez wrote in the bill.
Sometimes unit owners fight back. In November, condo owners in Brickell ousted their association's president after he led their board to approve a $21 million special assessment, the Miami Herald reported.
CROWN Act
Sen. Shevrin Jones, a Democrat whose District 34 stretches from Miami Gardens to the northern half of Miami Beach, proposed a bill in February aimed at prohibiting discrimination based on hairstyle within Florida's public K-12 schools, colleges and universities. Jones' SB 476, dubbed Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair Act, or CROWN Act, introduces the term 'protected hairstyle.'
The term 'means hair characteristics historically associated with race,' including afros, braids, locks or twists.
If passed, students could not be excluded from participating in educational programs or activities due to their hairstyle. The bill extends its provisions to private schools participating in the state school choice scholarship program, 'mandating compliance with antidiscrimination requirements that include protected hairstyles.'
Boating laws
In January, Miami-Dade Republican Sen. Ileana Garcia proposed harsher penalties for a person who flees a boating accident. She was motivated by the Labor Day 2022 Biscayne Bay boat crash that killed a 17-year-old Our Lady of Lourdes student and critically injured another 18-year-old student.
Her SB 58 includes a prison sentence of up to 30 years and a fine of $10,000 for someone who leaves a boat crash that results in someone's death, which would come with a first-degree felony charge. If the person is under the influence, they would face a mandatory minimum prison sentence of four years. Her bill adds additional penalties to 2024 Florida Statutes related to 'a collision, accident, or other casualty.' The bill also expands the definition of vessel homicide to include 'the killing of an unborn child by causing injury to the mother,' to align it with a similar law concerning motor vehicles that has been on state books since 2014.
Regulating a Trump Presidential Library
In January, one of President Donald Trump's lobbyists toured Florida International University as part of a push to land the Miami-Dade school on the list for favored sites for the inevitable Donald Trump Presidential Library.
FIU's main campus near Sweetwater is just four miles from the president's golf resort in Doral and about 80 miles from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach — Trump's Florida home away from the White House.
Wherever the library is built, if it's in Florida, Rep. Sen. Jason Brodeur of Sanford wants to make sure the government doesn't throw roadblocks in the path of its construction and design.
His Senate Bill 118 reminds his colleagues that 'presidential libraries are unique national institutions designated to house, preserve and make accessible the records of former presidents. His bill would preempt all state regulation of the establishment, maintenance, activities and operations of any presidential library within its jurisdiction and defers regulation of such institutions to the Federal Government.'
'I think there's a history in the state of Florida from local municipalities giving President Trump problems with some of the zoning things that he's had, whether it's a helicopter pad or the size of his flag,' Brodeur said in Tallahassee, News Service Florida reported in February. 'With us having the opportunity to actually have the first presidential library ever [in Florida] ... this would really be a landmark thing for Florida. And we wanted to make sure that we had rolled out the welcome mat as best we could.'
Garbage plant near the Everglades?
As Miami-Dade's leaders debate where, or if, to build a new waste facility to replace the one that burned down in Doral in 2023, Republican Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez has proposed Senate Bill 946 to preempt local approval of waste facilities that would be near the Everglades — within two miles of its protection area — and giving that power to the state.
Rodriguez represents District 40, which encompasses parts of Miami-Dade that include attractions like Zoo Miami, Larry and Penny Thompson Park, Tropical Park and Nixon Smiley Pineland Preserve. The district also extends into the Florida Keys.
A similar bill filed by state Sen. Bryan Avila, SB 1008, would block local governments and the Florida Department of Environmental Protection from issuing a construction permit for ash-producing incinerators or waste-to-energy facilities for any site within a half-mile radius of a residential property, commercial property or school.
KNOW MORE: What happens to your trash bill if Miami-Dade never rebuilds its Doral incinerator?
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