Florida House approves school voucher, lawsuit limit bills

TALLAHASSEE — The Florida House approved Friday two key pieces of legislation creating universal taxpayer-funded vouchers for use at private schools and sweeping lawsuit limits designed to benefit insurance companies and other businesses.

The bills are now teed up for Senate approval, which could come as soon as next week as the Legislature moves quickly through a regular session guided largely by the agenda of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The bills received overwhelming support from the Republican-dominated House, which voted 83-27 for the voucher bill (HB 1), and 80-31 for the lawsuit bill (HB 837).

House Speaker Paul Renner, R-Palm Coast, said it was great to wrap up the second week of the session with “two bills that were so transformational.”

Opponents of the voucher bill, most of them Democrats, raised concerns about sweeping money out of the public school system and subsidizing private education, in some cases for children of wealthy parents.

“Everyone believes in the concept of parental choice,” said Rep. Robin Bartleman, D-Weston, but she then cited the Florida Constitution, which states that public education is a fundamental right that should be uniform, safe and of high quality.

“This bill and voucher program doesn’t create a uniform system as required,” Bartleman said. “All these private schools taking tax dollars do not play by the same rules as public schools.”

Private schools don’t follow the same standards as public schools, she said. Nor do they have to meet the same safety requirements as charter and public schools, she said.

But Rep. Ralph Massullo, R-LeCanto, said quality education begins with choice.

“I didn’t hear anyone from the back row say they were against choice because we all know each child is unique,” said Massullo, who served on the board of Seven Rivers Christian School. “We differ in our philosophy of education. Some believe parents should have the right to decision making, others believe we should have one system that accommodates the need of every child.”

“Our goal isn’t to degrade public education in this state but to improve it,” Massullo said but also provide choice.

Florida should not make the same mistake as Arizona did with school vouchers, House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell said.

“It was an unmitigated disaster,” she said, noting that wealthy families used the program to pay for their children’s private school tuition.

It cost Arizona $33 million the first year, $67 million the second and could be as high as $1 billion by 2026, she said.

“It didn’t cause a mass migration from public schools but did cause a migration of public dollars to these private schools,” Driskell said.

Republican state lawmakers, who hold a supermajority in the Legislature, want to open up the state voucher programs that currently provide scholarships to more than 252,000 children with disabilities or from low-income families to all of the 2.9 million school-age children in Florida.

Their proposals (HB 1 and SB 202) would give any parent the choice to receive a voucher for their child to be used for private school tuition or homeschooling services and supplies — as long as that student was not enrolled in public school.

DeSantis also has been a supporter of the programs.

Critics fear the planned expansion will decimate public school budgets — estimates of funding losses vary widely from $210 million to $4 billion in the first year — and encourage private schools of questionable quality to open or expand.

The state does not generally regulate private schools, so there are no requirements that teachers have college degrees or for standardized testing to grade the quality of the schools.

Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, put a $646 million price tag on the voucher expansion this week, a number that Democrats said is low.

About three out of four schools that receive vouchers are religious in nature. Some critics argue that taxpayer money shouldn’t go to such schools.

The House approved HB 837 after about two hours of debate.

Families of shooting victims and motorcyclists came out in droves to oppose the legal reforms supported by the governor. They argued the changes could deny crime victims civil damages and shield businesses and insurance companies from being held responsible when they harm someone.

Supporters of the measure, mostly Republicans, objected to insurance companies being demonized.

A provision dealing with damages will hurt civil cases brought by crime victims, said Todd Michaels, a trial attorney and secretary of the Florida Justice Association, the state’s trial lawyers association.

The measure would allow damages to be assigned to the perpetrator of the crime in negligence cases, which Michaels said would let defendants who could have prevented a crime off the hook by shifting blame to the criminal.

But supporters of the lawsuit bill say litigation is out of control in Florida, which is driving up insurance premiums and hurting businesses.

“Billboard and personal injury trial lawyers who advertise on TV for too long have taken advantage of Florida’s bottom-five legal climate to line their own pockets, and today was a significant step in ending this abuse costing Florida families, consumers, and local businesses,” Mark Wilson, President and CEO of the Florida Chamber of Commerce, said in a news release shortly after the vote.

DeSantis has called for reforms, saying Florida “has been considered a judicial hell hole due to excessive litigation and a legal system that benefitted the lawyers more than the people who are injured.”

The bill also would create a “presumption against liability” if apartment complexes have security cameras, lighting, locks and peepholes on doors. Supporters say that will make apartments safer, while opponents argue those safeguards are minimal and will stop legitimate claims from moving forward.

State Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando, who sponsored last year’s Miya’s Law, which strengthens tenant safety measures, said she is also supporting the lawsuit bill and working to address apartment safety by adding to the measure.

Rep. Ashley Gantt, D-Miami, reminded her colleagues that DeSantis praised the bill when he signed it into law last year, saying that “every tenant deserves to be safe in their own home.”

The bill was named after Miya Marcano, a 19-year-old Valencia College sophomore from Pembroke Pines killed in 2021 by an apartment maintenance worker who had a master key to her apartment. Her father said the legislation would hurt his effort to bring accountability for her death.

“This bill will make that bill he signed just last year ineffective,” Gantt said.

Bikers are angered that someone who is found to be more than 50% at fault in their own accident would be denied damages entirely. When assigning blame in a crash, jurors could consider whether a biker is wearing a helmet, which isn’t required under Florida law.

The legislation would also reduce the statute of limitations for filing negligence claims from four years to two years. It would make it harder to pursue “bad faith” lawsuits against insurers and revise laws about evidence of medical expenses that can be admitted in court in personal-injury and wrongful-death lawsuits.

“We are giving corporations all the power, taking one of the avenues people have to access justice and taking that away from them,” said Rep. Michelle Rayner Goolsby, D-Clearwater.

Rep. Mike Gottlieb, D-Davie, said the bill “feels like it’s aimed simply to benefit the insurance companies.”

But the bill’s sponsor, House Judiciary Chair Tommy Gregory, R-Lakewood Ranch, said the goal is to bring balance to a civil justice system that has gotten out of hand.

“We’re not giving all the power to corporations,” Gregory said. “We are balancing. We are giving juries the power to cut down that tort tax.”

News Service of Florida contributed to this report.