State Page · FLORIDA

This is the template. One of these exists for each state. Eight topics, plain language, with the citation and the attorney sign-off underneath. Florida is built first because it is where the program operates.

NOT YET SIGNED. Every entry below is drafted and cited and none of it is final. A licensed Florida criminal defense attorney reviews and signs this page before it is delivered to a single family, and an immigration attorney signs topic 8 separately. The signature block at the bottom is blank on purpose. Until it is filled in, this page is a draft and the facilitator says so out loud.

1 · Do you have to give your name

Yes, in a lawful stop. Florida has a stop and identify law. If an officer has reasonable suspicion that you are involved in criminal activity, he may detain you briefly and require your name, your address, and an explanation of what you are doing. Refusing can be charged as resisting an officer without violence, a first degree misdemeanor carrying up to one year in jail and a fine of up to one thousand dollars.

But it has a limit. The stop has to be lawful in the first place. If an officer had no reasonable suspicion, the requirement does not attach, and Florida courts have thrown out charges on exactly that. That is an argument for a courtroom, not for the roadside.

Fla. Stat. § 901.151 (Stop and Frisk Law) · Fla. Stat. § 843.02

2 · What you must hand over while driving

Driver licence, vehicle registration, and proof of insurance, on request. Those are required and this is a separate question from whether you must answer anything else. You do not have to answer where you are going, where you have been, or what is in the car.

Say where the documents are before you reach for them.

Fla. Stat. § 322.15 and related provisions

3 · Recording

You have a First Amendment right to record officers performing their duties in public. The federal appeals court covering Florida recognised this. An officer needs a warrant to search your phone.

Florida is an all party consent state for intercepting private conversations, but the statute applies to communications where the speaker has a reasonable expectation of privacy. An officer doing his job in public generally does not have one.

Practical rule. Mount the phone and set it to record before you drive. Do not reach for it during a stop.

Fla. Stat. § 934.03 · § 934.02(2) · Smith v. City of Cumming, 212 F.3d 1332 (11th Cir. 2000)

4 · Resisting

This is the most important entry on this page.

In Florida you are not justified in using force to resist an arrest by somebody you know is a law enforcement officer, even if that arrest turns out to be unlawful. There is no defence of he was wrong.

Resisting without violence is a first degree misdemeanor. Resisting with violence is a felony.

The remedy is later, through a lawyer, and it is a real remedy. Unlawful arrests get suppressed, charges get dropped, and civil claims get paid. None of that happens on the side of a road.

Fla. Stat. § 776.051(1) · § 843.01 · § 843.02

5 · Firearms and the duty to inform

HIGHEST RISK ENTRY ON THIS PAGE. Do not deliver this section until an attorney has signed it and confirmed it against the current session's legislation.

Florida permits carrying a concealed weapon without a permit for eligible people as of July 1, 2023. What an attorney must confirm before this is taught: whether Florida imposes any duty to inform an officer that you are armed, what you are required to say and when, and what changes if you are carrying under a permit versus without one.

What is recommended regardless of what the law requires.

Hands high on the wheel before he arrives. Say it first, before anything else, before documents.

Officer, I need to tell you something. I have a firearm in the vehicle. I am not going to reach for anything. Tell me what you want me to do.

Then do not move at all.

Fla. Stat. § 790.01, § 790.06 · HB 543 (2023)

6 · School searches and school officers

School officials may search a student on a lower standard than police use. They need reasonable grounds to suspect the search will turn up evidence of a violation of law or school rules. That is a lower bar than probable cause.

A school resource officer is a sworn law enforcement officer. When he acts as an officer rather than as school staff, the higher standard should apply, and that distinction is frequently where a case is won or lost.

What a student should know. You may say I do not consent to a search even when the search happens anyway. Saying it preserves the argument. Never physically resist.

New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985) · Fla. Stat. § 1006.12

7 · Questioning a minor

[ATTORNEY] This entry needs a Florida juvenile practitioner. The questions to answer: when parental notification is required, whether a parent has a right to be present during questioning, whether a minor can waive rights without a parent, and what changes in a school setting.

Until signed, the facilitator says this exactly: Florida has specific rules about questioning people under eighteen and I am not going to guess at them. Here is the number for somebody who knows.

8 · Armed civilians, and immigration enforcement

Armed civilians. Florida has a stand your ground law and it applies to private people, not only to police. A person with a gun and no authority is a different problem with different rules, and the Trayvon Martin case happened in this state. This entry needs an attorney's plain language explanation of what a civilian may and may not lawfully do, and what a young person should do when confronted by one.

Immigration. Federal law, not Florida law, and it is a separate track. See Session 5 of the Parent Workbook. The two points that matter most: an ICE administrative warrant, Form I-200 or I-205, does not authorize entry into a home, and there is no appointed lawyer in immigration court.

Note for Florida specifically. Because of the shape of the state, effectively all of Florida sits within the hundred mile zone from an external boundary where federal immigration authorities assert expanded authority for checkpoints and roving patrols. That does not eliminate Fourth Amendment rights and this entry needs an immigration attorney to state precisely what it does and does not mean.

Fla. Stat. § 776.012, § 776.013 · 8 U.S.C. § 1357 and 8 C.F.R. § 287.1

SIGN-OFF

Topics 1 through 7, Florida criminal and juvenile law

Attorney name: ________________________________

Florida Bar number: ________________________________

Signature: ________________________________ Date signed: ____________

Next review due: ____________ (annually, or sooner on a statutory change)

Topic 8, immigration

Attorney name: ________________________________

Bar number and state: ________________________________

Signature: ________________________________ Date signed: ____________

Next review due: ____________

If either review date has passed, this page renders as "check with a lawyer in your state" and is not delivered.