Florida Today
March 8, 2024
What flourished and what flopped at the end of the Sunshine State’s annual 60-day legislative get-together.
Ron DeSantis started the session as a presidential candidate, becoming an un-candidate just two weeks in. The speculation started: Would he exert as much control over the process as he had last session?
The closest Florida lawmakers got to a hullabaloo in 2024 was over the effort to keep kids under 16 off social media. They pushed the measure known as HB 1 to passage then found out DeSantis wasn’t kidding about how much the social media minor ban caught him crosswise because of parents’ rights and anonymous speech concerns.
So legislative leadership went bill rewriting, pulling a related measure (HB 3) out of the dustbin of session and tossing in “similar, slightly less sweeping restrictions,” as the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida reported, creating an exception for 14- and 15-year-olds who get a parent’s or guardian’s permission.
Efforts to continue to remake the state into a conservative paradise were a bit of a mixed bag. Some bills, like the one to protect Confederate memorials, sputtered and fell into the black hole of dead legislative dreams. Others, ahem, streaked through: A bill to raise the minimum age to be a stripper in Florida to 21, up from 18.
The social media bill was House Speaker Paul Renner’s priority, and a wide-ranging health care plan to boost the number of health care providers sailed through, a legacy of Senate President Kathleen Passidomo.
Oh, but there were losers a-plenty. What follows is a ragtag list of winners and losers – Crimson Tides and Deacon Blues for Steely Dan fans – of the 2024 legislative session: