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.
Prohibiting a youth from being placed in disciplinary confinement; authorizing a youth to be placed in emergency confinement if certain conditions are met; limiting the allowable length of time for emergency confinement Prohibits DOC or local government from subjecting youth to solitary confineme
Prohibiting the use of solitary confinement; prohibiting the use of restrictive confinement for noncompliance, punishment, harassment, or retaliation for an inmate’s conduct; prohibiting youths, young adults, and inmates who have specified medical needs from being placed in restrictive confinemen
Prohibits DOC or local government from subjecting youth to solitary confinement; limits cell confinement for youth prisoners.
Prohibiting subjecting youth to solitary confinement, provides exceptions.
Requiring the state attorney of each judicial circuit to establish a conviction integrity review unit and an independent review panel within the state attorney’s office.
Creating the Statewide Council on Prosecutorial Misconduct within the Department of Legal Affairs.