Call to Action: Oppose HB 45 / SB 212 – “Sexual Offenders and Sexual Predators”
HB 45 and SB 212 are dangerous, extreme, and counterproductive. SB 212 would banish more than 30,000 Floridians from “being” within 200 feet of a body of water and both bills would make 80% of Florida uninhabitable, displacing thousands of families from their homes and causing thousands to lose stable employment. These bills undermine public safety by increasing homelessness, instability, unemployment, and monitoring challenges.
The bills will:
- Push thousands into homelessness by making the majority of Florida off-limits for housing.
- Prevent tens of thousands of individuals from ever going to a beach, fishing in a lake or “being” near waterways or swimming pools for life.
- Make supervision harder and reduce public safety.
- Increase the financial burden on Florida through higher incarceration and enforcement expenses and mass unemployment.
- Risk a certain constitutional challenge.
- Do absolutely nothing to meaningfully prevent abuse or protect children!
Evidence is clear: residency restrictions and banishment do not reduce re-offending. They increase instability, homelessness, unemployment and risk.
The Florida Action Committee urges you to contact Florida legislators and urge them to VOTE NO on CS/HB 45 and CS/SB 212.
Protect children through education, prevention, treatment, and effective supervision—not by creating homelessness and chaos.
- The bills seek to expand exclusion zones to banish registrants from living within 1,000 feet of Florida’s 8,426 miles of shoreline along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts; more than 7,700 lakes that are 10 acres or larger (including Lake Okeechobee); over 30,000 other lakes and ponds; approximately 12,000 miles of rivers, streams and canals; and hundreds of thousands of swimming pools. The swimming pool restriction includes apartment complexes, motels, mobile home parks, etc.
- SB 212 creates an expansive proximity ban that would criminalize the mere presence of certain individuals within 200 feet of a wide range of everyday public places, including swimming pools (even if in a residential community or hotel) and beaches, regardless of intent, probation status or whether the offense was committed decades ago.
- Residence restrictions and proximity ordinances “increased isolation, created financial and emotional stress, and led to decreased stability” and reduced housing options for registrants. (Jill S. Levenson & Leo P. Cotter, The Impact of Sex Offender Residence Restrictions: 1,000 Feet From Danger or One Step From Absurd?, 49 Int’l J. Offender Therapy & Comp. Criminology 168 (2005)). Broward County, FL study (N≈109) showed that residency restrictions were associated with increased transience, homelessness, and difficulty securing employment and treatment. The study documents registrants’ self-reports and local enforcement perspectives. (Jill S. Levenson, Collateral Consequences of Sex Offender Residence Restrictions, 21 Criminal Justice Stud. 153 (2008)).
- FDLE research/survey of probation/parole officers in Florida reporting that officers view residency restrictions as a top obstacle to finding housing for supervised offenders; officers linked restrictions to homelessness and recommended risk-tiering and supervised/shared housing as remedies. (Amy L. Datz, Sex Offender Residency Restrictions, Sanity or Inhumanity (research paper), Fla. Dep’t of Law Enforcement (FDLE) (2009)). Homeless people are hard to monitor as they move frequently and are hard to locate (OPPAGA, 2024).
- If the amended statute is challenged, which it almost certainly would be, a Court may find that the exclusion zones are tantamount to banishment. That could result in the entire statute being declared unconstitutional and Florida would be left without any residency restriction.
You can find contact information for all Florida Senators here: https://www.flsenate.gov/Senators
And for all Florida Representatives here: https://www.flhouse.gov/representatives
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How These Bills Will Restrict MY Family (CS/HB 45 & CS/SB 212)
TOTAL OCEAN & BEACH BAN: I am legally prohibited from being within 200 feet of the water at any beach in Florida. Because the law defines “public bathing places” as all coastal shorelines, I can no longer walk on the sand, swim, or sit with you by the ocean.
PUBLIC POOL PROHIBITION: All public swimming pools, including city pools, water parks, and community center pools, are strictly off-limits. I cannot even stand within 200 feet of the pool fence or deck.
NO MORE FLORIDA HOTEL STAYS: Florida law defines hotel and motel pools as “public.” If the hotel room, the lobby, or the hallways are within 200 feet of the pool area, I am committing a crime by being on the property. This effectively ends our family vacations at Florida resorts.
PARK, LAKE, & SPRING RESTRICTIONS:Any public park with a “bathing place” (lakes, rivers, or natural springs) becomes a restricted zone. Family outings to lakeside parks or Florida’s springs will be illegal for me.
WARRANTLESS ARREST AUTHORITY:Police do not need a warrant to take me to jail. If an officer identifies me at a beach, park, or hotel pool area, they have the power to arrest me on the spot in front of our children.
THE 1,000-FOOT HOUSING TRAP: If we move to a new home after July 1, 2026, we cannot live within 1,000 feet of any public pool or “bathing place.” In Florida, this eliminates almost all housing near the coast, rivers, or neighborhoods with community amenities.
Please email them this is bad
This is great, and the good news is that for now they appear to have dropped the 200-foot stipulation.
We’ll still have plenty to e-mail them about as the bill approaches the next committee.
Thank you! Do you have a link to that update?
J,
I do not see the 200 ft rule in there anymore, and I also do not see the “Lake, rivers, bodies of Water” verbiage either. However, we still are restricted from the enumerated physical property ie. Hotels with a pool, Gyms with a pool, the apartment clubhouse if the pool is right there. While it was nice to see the “within 200 feet of….” gone, it still is not enough.
Once again just my common man reading of the amended bill.
Can you refer me to the updated text if the bill that has removed the 200-ft restriction?
Thanks!
Robert
It seems that the constitution is just a piece of paper. It lays there on a desk or hung in a frame on the wall and has NO power, until someone acts on it. Failure to act takes away that power. Failure to act, meaning not doing the right thing.
This same thing happened back in the day saying ALL men are equal, but that didn’t work out so good during those in slavery times, and even for native Americans who were sent away to reservations.
God Bless FAC! Thank you, and those who will accompany you tomorrow.
For what it’s worth, I decided to post my letter here – just food for thought.
“I oppose SB 212. I urge you to vote “No” on SB 212.
SB 212 as amended, includes a newly proposed 200’ proximity restriction for essentially ALL Registered Floridians and visitors. SB 212 is an oppressive and extreme law which would significantly restrict freedom of movement and commerce, for tens of thousands of individuals living in, or visiting our state. Necessary daily life activities, such as accessing some grocery stores, markets, gas stations, medical and dental facilities, libraries, family member’s homes, and old fishing spots, among other places would be prohibited. Forest lakes, the Atlantic and Gulf of America beaches, as well as countless other water locations would be banned. Individuals prohibited from even seeing a beach or a river. Add to this the authorization of warrantless arrests for belief that this law has been violated.
SB 212 effectively places many of the current Probation and Community Control restrictions onto those individuals who were never sentenced to probation or supervision. This Bill surly will not pass Constitutional muster.
Studies are clear; sex offender residency restrictions do not protect the public, but increase recidivism. A Stanford Economic Review study outlines the adverse impacts of residency restrictions, while there are no data indicating any citizen safety benefits from these restrictions.
GIS-based analysis shows that between 65–80% of all Florida housing lies within 1,000 feet of a body of water or public pool. Expanding state-wide residency restrictions to include potentially every lake, river, waterway, coastline, and public pool (including low-rent motels and RV parks) will make housing impossible for tens of thousands of Floridians and their families. This expansion will take homelessness to punitive levels, effectively resulting in banishment and displacement of sex offenders and their family units.
• Such legislative overreach endangers the constitutionality of Fla. Stat. § 775. Courts may find the expanded law punitive and unconstitutional as a form of de facto banishment.
• SB 212 makes law enforcement’s job more difficult in location verification of registered individuals.
• Under this Bill, landlords will lose reliable tenants and face higher vacancy rates, leading to millions in lost income and property tax. And what about the Villages of Lake Sumter and Marion, as well as Florida’s retirement community industry?
• In terms of public safety, re-offense rates for new sex crimes are 1–5%, compared with 40–60% for drug and property offenses.
• Residency restrictions have been shown not to reduce crime, but create multiple adverse outcomes within communities, such as increased crime and homelessness.
Creating unstable living conditions for individuals attempting to reintegrate into society as productive citizens of Florida is akin to exile. Public safety is not achieved through banishment or “forever punishment”; it is achieved through stable housing, employment, access to community, family and support systems, as well as community reintegration.”
Thank you for keeping up with these terrible bills. I have sent a request to oppose these bills.
This bill is first on the agenda of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for this coming Tuesday 2/10 at noon.
So today and Monday would probably be a good time to reach out to each committee member and let them know of your opposition.
(h/t: Wayne).
Ok – so if all sanctions were completed and the “conviction” is prior to 10/01/2004 and or even further back, 10/01/1997 or even prior, these residency restrictions do not apply in any form, even if one was forced to registered back then ? Am I wrong here ?
I know that local ordinance have tried to stretch it further at times to old convictions, but don’t think they’ve been changed in court about it?