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While Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to look over bills on his desk from the 2025 legislative session, here’s a look at 20 laws slated to go into effect on July 1.
FLORIDA, USA — Come Tuesday, July 1, nearly 100 new laws will take effect in Florida, impacting different areas in the Sunshine State.
While Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to look over bills on his desk from the 2025 legislative session, here’s a look at 20 laws slated to go into effect on July 1.
HB 209: State Park Preservation Act
The State Park Preservation Act requires the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to protect Florida’s state parks from commercial development, such as golf courses and hotels, and prioritize them for conservation and traditional recreational activities.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
Known as the Pam Rock Act, this law creates harsher penalties for owners of “dangerous” dogs that cause severe injury or death. This includes confiscating the dog during investigations if it hurts and kills a person, requiring owners to obtain at least $100,000 in liability insurance and ensuring the animals are in a secure enclosure.
Additionally, the law requires “dangerous” dogs to be microchipped and animal shelters to notify potential adopters if a dog has been declared dangerous to ensure transparency. Removing a dog’s microchip constitutes a third-degree felony under the law.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
This law requires state agencies to update geographic materials to reflect the new federal designation of the “Gulf of Mexico” as the “Gulf of America.”
It also requires new instructional materials and library media center collections to reflect the name change.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
HB 351: Dangerous Excessive Speeding
This law creates stricter penalties for drivers who go 50 mph or more over the speed limit and also applies to drivers who go more than 100 mph. Drivers convicted can face up to 30 days of jail time, a $500 fine or both. If it’s the driver’s second or subsequent conviction, he or she can face up to 90 days in jail, a $1,000 fine or both.
A person convicted of a second or subsequent violation within five years after the date of the first conviction will have his or her driving privileges revoked for at least 180 days but no longer than one year.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
HB 791: Surrendered Infants
The law allows certain hospitals and fire stations to use “infant safety devices” like a “baby box” to accept surrendered infants. The devices must have a surveillance system monitoring them 24/7. Staff also must physically check and test the devices at specified intervals.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
SB 1374: School District Reporting Requirements
This law requires district school boards to adopt a policy temporarily removing employees who were arrested for certain crimes. Those crimes include sexual, violent and drug offenses such as child abuse and the sale or possession of a controlled substance. The employee must be removed within 24 hours of notification of an arrest.
Educators must also self-report within 48 hours of their arrest.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
SB 296: Middle School and High School Start Times
This law gives school boards and charter schools the ability to decide when school starts within their district. This undoes a 2023 law that would’ve pushed back school start times.
Before this law was signed, schools were facing a July 2026 deadline to adjust start times. The 2023 law would’ve required public middle schools to start no earlier than 8 a.m. and for high schools to begin no earlier than 8:30 a.m.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
This law allows property owners to request their local sheriff’s office to remove a person unlawfully occupying a commercial property if specified conditions are met.
One condition is that property owners must submit a completed and verified complaint to the county sheriff before anyone is removed.
The law also creates harsher penalties for individuals unlawfully occupying a commercial property. It will be considered a second-degree felony for any person unlawfully in a residential or commercial property who intentionally damages the property, causing $1,000 in damage.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
SB 700: Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services
The law requires that fluoride and other additives be removed from water sources across the Sunshine State. Florida is the second state in the country, after Utah, to implement a statewide ban on the mineral.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
HB 255: Aggravated Animal Cruelty
This law requires the Department of Law Enforcement to create a database with the names of certain people who have violated specified animal cruelty laws. It’s been dubbed “Dexter’s Law,” named after a dog who was found decapitated in Pinellas County.
The law also allows for a sentencing multiplier for animal abuse crimes. An offender could face harsher penalties in severe cases of abuse.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
SB 56: Geoengineering and Weather Modification Activities
This law prohibits certain acts intended to affect the temperature, weather, or intensity of sunlight in the atmosphere in the state.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
HB 85: Hazardous Walking Conditions
This law revises criteria that determine hazardous walking conditions for public school students.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
SB 106: Exploitation of Vulnerable Adults
This law lays out the process for obtaining an injunction to protect a vulnerable adult from financial exploitation.
The law allows a family member or trusted contact to petition the court to temporarily halt a suspicious transaction for 30 days. The law also outlines procedures for serving the injunction on an “unascertainable respondent” who is communicating with the vulnerable adult through digital means such as social media or email.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
This law prevents government entities from adopting and enforcing ordinances, resolutions, regulations, rules and policies that prohibit, restrict, regulate or otherwise limit an activity of a bona fide farm operation, including but not limited to the collection, storage, processing and distribution of a farm product (plants and plant products) on land classified as agricultural land.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
SB 248: Student Participation in Interscholastic and Intrascholastic Extracurricular Sports
This law specifies conditions for homeschool students in order to participate in interscholastic sports and revises criteria for private school students to join Florida High School Athletic Association member school teams.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
HB 259: Special Observances
This law designates August 21 of each year as “Fentanyl Awareness & Education Day,” encouraging the Department of Health, Department of Children and Families, local governments and public schools to sponsor events to promote awareness of the dangers of fentanyl and potential overdoses.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
This law enhances criminal penalties for the misuse of emergency communication systems, resulting in great bodily harm, permanent disfigurement, permanent disability, or death.
The law makes it a felony to make a false 911 report that results in a response from a public safety agency, with enhanced penalties for repeat offenders and requirements for restitution to law enforcement and victims.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
SB 282: Warranty Associations
This law revises the requirements of contractual liability insurance policies, revises the circumstances under which certain service warranty associations are not required to establish unearned premium reserves or to maintain contractual liability insurance, and more.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
HB 307: Bonuses for Employees of Property Appraisers
This law allows a local tax collector property appraiser to budget and pay for a hiring or retention bonus to an employee if such expenditure has been approved by the Department of Revenue in the respective budget.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
This law prohibits public office candidates, elected public officers, appointed public officers and public employees from knowingly misrepresenting their military service records, awards, qualifications or wearing any uniform, medal or insignia that they are not authorized to wear.
Click here to read the law in its entirety.
SB 356: Holocaust Remembrance Day
HB 383: Purchase and Possession of Firearms by Law Enforcement Officers, Correctional Officers, Correctional Probation Officers, and Servicemembers
SB 384: Annexing State-owned Lands
SB 388: Trust Funds for Wildlife Management
HB 421: Peer Support for First Responders
HB 429: Motor Vehicle Manufacturers and Franchised Motor Vehicle Dealers
HB 447: Disability History and Awareness Instruction
SB 472: Education in Correctional Facilities for Professional Licensure
SB 480: Nonprofit Agricultural Organization Medical Benefit Plans
10 Tampa Bay’s Alexa Herrera contributed to this report.
