Florida House

Health care CEO Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick was elected to fill the seat of late Democratic Florida U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings on Tuesday, boosting the Democrats’ slim majority in the House.

Who will hold the balance of power? Florida’s redistricting process gets messy and partisan.

After the Florida Senate tweaked its proposed new congressional maps, the House on Monday rolled out its first efforts for the once-a-decade redistricting process. Like the Senate, the House — in a pair of proposed maps — focused on carving the state’s new congressional district in Central Florida, mostly around Polk County.

The vacancy left behind by the death of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings will be one of the longest in modern American history. Now, the ripple effects are coming to light in the race to fill his seat.

They include a requirement for out-of-state online retailers to collect sales taxes on purchases made by Floridians, and surveys to assess the “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” at state colleges and universities.

The bipartisan bill was a compromise supported by House leadership. It passed 113 to 0.

Law enforcement agencies could use drones to survey crowds, assist in traffic management, and collect evidence at a crime scene or traffic crash. That's under a proposal that passed a Senate vote and is heading for a House vote. But some lawmakers have raised concerns over how the bill could impact someone's privacy.

The measure would prevent doctors from performing abortions that women seek because of tests showing that fetuses will have disabilities.

A measure that would allow people to carry in guns in churches and other religious institutions, even when they’re attached to schools, has passed in the Florida House. Supporters say it’s a property rights issue. But many Democrats are raising concerns about what the measure could mean for guns in classrooms.

In a culmination of weeks of controversial debate, the Florida House on Friday passed House Bill 1, a broad anti-rioting legislation that is one of the top legislative priorities of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The bill is called the Parents Bill of Rights and it gives parents ultimate say in the direction of their child’s education and healthcare planning. Supporters argue the bill clarifies what’s already supposed to happen, but opponents worry the measure may open the door to discriminate against LGBTQ and minority students and allow parents to opt out of immunizations and health exams.

A series of proposals — from requiring the governor to justify closing schools and businesses to limiting the authority of local governments — have been lumped into a House bill aimed at bracing Florida for the next health care crisis as it continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.