Florida House Speaker Blocks AI Bill of Rights During Special Session

--- headline: "Florida House Speaker Blocks AI Bill of Rights During Special Session" slug: florida-house-blocks-ai-bill-of-rights category: policy story_number: "12" date: 2026-04-28 ---

# Florida House Speaker Blocks AI Bill of Rights During Special Session

The Florida Senate passed one of the most ambitious state-level AI consumer protection bills in the country on Monday, only to watch it die hours later when House Speaker Daniel Perez refused to let his chamber consider it. The episode marks the second time in two months that the Florida House has killed the AI Bill of Rights, exposing a deepening rift between Governor Ron DeSantis and his own party's legislative leadership over who should regulate artificial intelligence and how urgently it needs to happen.

A Bill With Broad Senate Support, and a One-Vote Opposition

Senate Bill 2D sailed through the upper chamber on a 37-1 vote during the first day of a four-day special session that DeSantis had called primarily to redraw congressional maps. The governor had added AI regulation and vaccine policy to the session's agenda, but Perez made clear from the outset that the House would address only redistricting.

The lone dissenting vote came from Sen. Erin Grall, a Republican from Fort Pierce, who argued the bill did not go far enough. "We have been told that it does something, but at the end of the day, the words matter, and when those words do not match up with actual rights that people will have when they are faced with harms, we are doing more harm than good for the people of Florida when they believe that we have taken meaningful action, and we actually haven't," Grall said on the Senate floor.

The bill's sponsor, Senate President Pro Tempore Jason Brodeur, a Republican from Lake Mary, framed the legislation as a restatement of common-sense principles. "Parents should know what their children are using; children should not be manipulated by systems pretending to be human; personal information should not be carelessly sold or exposed; a person's image should not be commercially exploited without consent, and Floridians should be able to trust that technology is serving them, not deceiving them," Brodeur told colleagues before the vote.

What the Bill Would Have Done

SB 2D was a refiled version of legislation the Senate passed in March during the regular session, which the House also declined to take up. Its provisions targeted several fast-moving areas of AI deployment:

- Minor protections: Parents would have had the explicit right to supervise, access, limit, and control their children's use of AI systems. - Chatbot disclosure: Companies would have been required to inform users when they are communicating with an AI system rather than a human. - Personal data sales ban: The bill would have restricted technology companies from selling personal or biometric data collected through AI interactions. - Likeness protections: Commercial exploitation of a person's name, image, or likeness by AI systems without consent would have been prohibited.

The House Blockade and the Federal Question

No House member filed a companion bill before the special session began, a procedural reality that effectively guaranteed the legislation would go nowhere. Both chambers must pass the same version of a bill before it can reach the governor's desk.

Perez has consistently argued that AI regulation should be handled at the federal level rather than through a patchwork of state laws. That position aligns him with the Trump White House, which has signaled that it opposes state-by-state AI regulation. Reports indicate the administration reached out to Perez directly to discourage Florida from moving forward with the bill.

The tech industry backed the House speaker's stance. The Computer and Communications Industry Association issued a statement warning that the legislation could create "broad regulatory burdens without clearly improving safety or accountability." A CCIA spokesperson argued that "a patchwork of state-level requirements creates uncertainty for developers and can limit the availability of beneficial tools and services for users in Florida."

DeSantis Fires Back

The governor did not take the House's inaction quietly. DeSantis posted on X, calling the move "typical political shenanigans" and criticizing his own party's members. "Voters elected Republicans to protect freedom against both the Big Tech cartel and the medical industrial complex," he wrote. "When given the chance to deliver for their constituents, not a single Republican House member could even be bothered to file a bill."

The public clash underscores an unusual dynamic in Tallahassee. DeSantis, who built his national profile partly on confrontations with technology companies, has found himself at odds with a Republican-controlled House that is more sympathetic to industry arguments about regulatory overreach. The governor has openly expressed skepticism about the rapid expansion of AI and has pushed for states to implement their own guardrails rather than waiting for Congress to act.

The Broader State-Level AI Regulation Landscape

Florida's impasse reflects a pattern playing out across the country. More than 1,100 AI-related bills were introduced in U.S. state legislatures in 2025 alone, yet few have become law. The tension between urgency and jurisdictional uncertainty continues to paralyze action: governors and state senators push for consumer protections while industry groups and some legislative leaders argue that a single federal framework would be more effective than dozens of conflicting state rules.

The failure of the Florida AI Bill of Rights is particularly notable because it had strong bipartisan support in the Senate, backing from the governor, and addressed issues such as child safety and data privacy that typically attract broad public support. If a bill with those advantages cannot clear both chambers in a state where one party controls every lever of government, the path for meaningful state-level AI regulation anywhere remains steep.

The special session continues through Thursday, with redistricting as the only remaining agenda item the House will address.