Florida Legislative History

Step 1- Determine the Bill Number

In order to find the legislative history of a statute, you will need to bill number of the legislation, including the year enacted. 

If you do not have the bill number, you will need to locate it for the statute you are researching. 

To do this you must look at the statutes history credits to determine which session law put into place the specific statutory language you are interested in. The history will include the session law number of its enactment, followed by all, if any, amendments. 

Example History Note:

History.—s. 1, ch. 23658, 1947; s. 6, ch. 65-190; s. 1, ch. 65-447; s. 4, ch. 82-134; s. 7, ch. 2015-163.

Here we can see that the statute was enacted in 1947 by session law number 23658. It  has been amended 4 times, most recently by ch. 2015-163 in 2015. If you were looking at the legislative history of an amendment, you would need to determine which amendment added the statutory language by reviewing the Laws of Florida. 

Session Laws and Laws of Florida

The Laws of Florida are the official publication of the session laws of the State of Florida. Session laws are a collection of laws enacted by a legislature during a single legislative session. They are published chronologically, and each session law is given a number that corresponds in the order in which it was enacted. Print copies are available in the LIC.

The Laws of Florida provide the text of the law as it was passed, with underlining representing deleted language and underlining representing added language. They are really useful for understanding the law as it was passed as they do not get updated when amended or repealed. 

Once you have identified the corresponding session law, you can then locate the bill number in the title of the session law.

Step 2- Locate the Bills History

For bills enacted after 1998, all the legislative material produced during its history will be located either on the Senate or House Website.

You can see the staff analyses, vote histories, different versions of the bill, committee hearings, etc. For more information about using this material, visit the Sources of Legislative History Page.