Legislative Histories -- Florida

• Following the text in the statutes is a history note identifying the law(s) which created or amended that section.
• Use the year, chapter, and section number to locate the enacted bill in the Laws of Florida volumes.
• If there is more than one law cited in the history, the researcher will probably need to look at each one.

NOTE: The annotations following the text in the statutes may be useful for locating cases or law review articles about the specific statute. Although those materials are not part of the legislative history, they might help the researcher understand issues regarding the statute. The researcher conducting a comprehensive search should consult both the West and LexisNexis versions of the statutes since the annotations may differ.

• Use the history citation from Florida Statutes to locate the law, e.g.,
  ss. 1, 5, ch. 95-296 would be in the volumes for 1995, chapter 296, sections 1 and 5.
• The Senate or House bill number is identified at the beginning of the text and will be used for continuing the research in the bill citators.

Use the Senate or House bill number identified from Laws of Florida to locate:

• Status of the bill
• Bill sponsor
• Linked, identical, similar, or compared bills
• Brief description of the bill
• Chronological history
• Citations to pages in the House and Senate Journals
• Dates of action for committees through which the bill passed
• Staff analyses and committee reports