A three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal overturned a 2023 decision by Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper that said Moody had the power to enter settlements that effectively included trumping separate claims by local government agencies.

Wednesday’s ruling was a victory for the Sarasota County Public Hospital District, Lee Memorial Health System, the North Broward Hospital District, the South Broward Hospital District, Halifax Hospital Medical Center, the Miami-Dade County School Board and the Putnam County School Board. They have sought to pursue lawsuits to recover costs related to treating patients and educating children affected by the opioid epidemic.

All of the local agencies had sued drug distributors, manufacturers or pharmacies because of the epidemic.

“The attorney general does not have the legal authority to unilaterally dismiss, for example, actual and individual damages incurred by the two school boards for increased harms and expenditures for compliance with federal law for special educational needs for disabled students — disabled allegedly by the actions of the opioid (industry) defendants that caused the students or their parents to become addicted to prescription opioids,” the appeals court ruling said. “And this is but one example. The special hospital districts also assert individual and actual damages separate from the general public for harms allegedly inflicted by the opioid defendants that caused these hospitals to have to provide specialized medical care for opioid-addicted and harmed patients. It is not within the attorney general’s power to make such decisions.”

Moody’s office entered into seven settlements with a variety of companies — with each of the settlements including a “release” of claims filed by local governments. Some settlements resulted from multi-state litigation — what is known as a global settlement — while others came as a result of a lawsuit that the attorney general’s office filed in Pasco County.

Moody in 2022 filed a lawsuit in Leon County circuit court against the hospital districts and school boards to try to prevent their claims against the industry. The lawsuit said Moody’s settlements would provide money for opioid treatment, prevention and recovery services and that money would go to communities throughout the state. But the hospital districts and school board argued that Moody did not have the authority to release their claims.

Cooper’s decision last year said the Legislature “specifically granted the attorney general authority to enforce consumer protection laws” and that Moody had the power to enter settlements that prevented separate claims.

“Allowing defendants (the hospital districts and school districts) to continue pursuing their subordinate opioid claims threatens Florida’s sovereign interest in vindicating its citizens’ rights — all of its citizens’ rights — when confronted with societal harms such as the opioid crisis,” Cooper wrote. “These are collective harms. They do not flow in an insular fashion to individual (political) subdivisions — the harms cross city and county lines. Indeed the opioid settlements consider the pervasive harms caused by the opioid crisis and apply a mixture of statewide and local solutions. … Defendants’ continued pursuit of their opioid claims in contravention of the opioid settlements jeopardizes the flow of tens of millions of dollars that will aid in the abatement of the opioid epidemic throughout the state of Florida.”

But the appeals-court ruling, written by Judge Brad Thomas and joined by Judges Ross Bilbrey and Thomas Winokur, said the Legislature has “assigned the rights of legal representation of claims to appellants (the hospital districts and school boards) themselves, not the attorney general.”

“In essence, the attorney general asserts the unilateral substantive authority to dispose of appellants’ claims on behalf of the people of Florida, notwithstanding the enactment of law assigning that authority to appellants,” the 19-page ruling said. “But the attorney general is the ‘chief state legal officer’ of the state, not the client. As the state’s chief legal officer, the attorney general has limited common-law authority … to litigate claims common to the state at large — and, of course, claims authorized by general law, and limited by that law — but not to control claims of appellants who assert unique and individual actual damages.”

The ruling also said Moody “argues unpersuasively that as the state’s chief legal officer, she may bar appellants from representing themselves, while simultaneously denying any interest in representing appellants. The attorney general argues that it is her prerogative to eliminate the value of appellant’s individual claims for harms caused by the opioid defendants, as a ‘bargaining chip’ to obtain this global financial settlement. Thus, the attorney general asserts that she may disavow these school boards’ and hospital districts’ actual damages for her own negotiating prerogatives.”

“No doubt the global settlement achieves many laudable goals,” the ruling added. “But it cannot deprive appellants of their legal rights to be made whole for their unique losses.”

The attorneys Tuesday evening filed a motion for a stay and a broader brief that also argued Cole should be spared execution because of abuse he suffered as a teen at the state’s notorious Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys. Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 29 signed a death warrant for Cole, who was convicted in the 1994 murder of a Florida State University student in the Ocala National Forest.

The motion and the brief said the Supreme Court should require a Marion County circuit judge to hold an evidentiary hearing on the Parkinson’s disease issue. The brief said Cole, who has had Parkinson’s symptoms since 2017, “experiences shaking in both of his arms from his neck to his fingertips and in his legs.”

“Cole’s Parkinson’s symptoms will make it impossible for Florida to safely and humanely carry out his execution because his involuntary body movements will affect the placement of the intravenous lines necessary to carry out an execution by lethal injection,” the brief said.

Cole’s lawyers also wrote that he “faces a substantial risk of illness by injury and needless suffering.”

“When placing an intravenous line, each failed attempt creates a one-and-done for that vein,” the brief said. “Each attempt is singularly painful, and the pain will only escalate with each successive attempt to place an intravenous line. Should FDOC (the Florida Department of Corrections) fail to find a peripheral vein in Cole’s arms or legs, the lethal injection protocol directs the placement of a central intravenous line. The skill needed to do this is beyond an average person capable of placing intravenous lines in the arms or legs. The central vein location includes the groin, the neck, and below the collarbone.”

But Marion County Circuit Judge Robert Hodges last week rejected the Parkinson’s disease argument as part of a broader ruling that allowed the planned execution to move forward. Hodges wrote, in part, that the claim was “untimely” because Cole has long known about the Parkinson’s symptoms but did not raise the issue until after the death warrant was signed.

Hodges also wrote that he found the Parkinson’s disease argument “without merit” and that Cole “failed to allege that medical personnel have previously had problems finding a vein in his arm or that he has previously suffered pain during the placement of an intravenous line. Instead, he merely speculates that he will suffer because of his involuntary body movements.”

“The placement of an intravenous line in a patient with body movements is neither unique nor rare in the medical field,” Hodges added.

Cole, 57, was sent to Death Row in the February 1994 murder of Florida State University student John Edwards, who went to the Ocala National Forest to camp with his sister, a student at Eckerd College, court records show.

Cole and another man, William Paul, joined the brother and sister at their campsite. After they decided to walk to a pond, Cole knocked Edwards’ sister to the ground and ultimately handcuffed her, the records said. Paul took the sister up a trail, and Edwards died from a slashed throat and blows to the head that fractured his skull, according to the court records. Edwards’ sister was sexually assaulted and was tied to two trees the next morning before freeing herself. (In most cases, The News Service of Florida does not identify sexual-assault victims by name.)

Along with raising the Parkinson’s disease issue, Cole’s attorneys argue that his death sentence should be vacated because of abuse at the state’s now-closed Dozier reform school. Cole was at the Marianna school in 1984 and suffered abuse such as rape and beatings, according to Tuesday’s brief and arguments filed in the circuit court.

Cole’s attorneys said the jury that recommended a death sentence did not know about the abuse he suffered at Dozier. Also, the attorneys have pointed to a law that passed this year to compensate some victims of abuse at Dozier, though the law would not apply to Cole.

“Cole’s jury was not told about the compelling mitigation that Cole was a student at Dozier, where he experienced rape and other horrific methods of abuse,” Tuesday’s brief said. “If Cole’s jury had known about the severe abuse … at Dozier, and Florida’s willingness to acknowledge the severe problems at Dozier to the extent that designated victims are entitled to reparations, there is a reasonable probability the newly discovered evidence would yield a less severe sentence. There is a reasonable probability a jury presented with the newly discovered information would recommend a sentence of life for Cole.”

But Hodges last week ruled that “evidence regarding defendant’s (Cole’s) treatment while he

attended the Dozier School is not newly discovered evidence.” The judge said Cole’s lawyers unsuccessfully raised the issue of his treatment at Dozier in previous appeals.

“The court finds that although (the) defendant is using a different argument, he is attempting to relitigate the same issue he raised in two prior motions,” Hodges wrote.

Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office faces a Friday deadline for filing briefs at the Supreme Court.

Attorneys for the state, in a document filed Monday at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision requires a more-detailed analysis by a district judge about whether the law should be blocked. The state pushed back against tech-industry groups that contend briefs should be filed, at least initially, at the Atlanta-based appeals court.

The arguments are the latest steps in a high-profile lawsuit that started in 2021, after DeSantis and Republican lawmakers placed restrictions on large social-media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. That included preventing platforms from banning political candidates from their sites and requiring companies to publish — and apply consistently — standards about issues such as banning users or blocking their content.

The law seeks to regulate social-media platforms that have annual gross revenue of over $100 million or more than 100 million monthly active users. Companies could face steep penalties for violating the restrictions.

The law passed after Facebook and Twitter, now known as X, blocked former President Donald Trump from their platforms after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The tech-industry groups NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association challenged the constitutionality of the law. U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in 2021 issued a preliminary injunction to block the law (SB 7072) on First Amendment grounds, and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of Hinkle’s decision.

But on July 1, the Supreme Court vacated the appeals-court ruling and sent the lawsuit back for further consideration. The Supreme Court did not resolve the constitutional issues but said the 11th Circuit and another appeals court in a similar Texas case did not properly consider the “facial nature” of challenges to the laws, a critical element in deciding whether they met constitutional muster.

“To make that judgment, a court must determine a law’s full set of applications, evaluate which are constitutional and which are not, and compare the one to the other. Neither court performed that necessary inquiry,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the main opinion.

Now, Florida and the industry groups are tangling about how the case should move forward.

Attorneys for the industry groups, in an Aug. 2 motion at the 11th Circuit, argued that briefs should be filed “so that the parties can address the import of the Supreme Court’s decision, whether this (appeals) court can resolve the facial challenge on this record or whether a remand to the district court is necessary, and if so, whether the preliminary injunction should remain in effect pending any necessary further proceedings.”

“Indeed, the Supreme Court’s decision expressly contemplates additional proceedings in this (appeals) court to determine in the first instance whether SB 7072 prohibits a substantial amount of protected speech relative to its plainly legitimate sweep,” attorneys for the groups wrote.

But in a response filed Monday, lawyers in Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office and with the firm Cooper & Kirk PLLC contended that the case should go back to district court. It said the state has “been enjoined from enforcing SB 7072 in its entirety for three years despite no showing in the district court that NetChoice is likely to succeed on its facial challenge, as that standard is properly applied.”

The response said the record in the case is “not adequate to assess the merits of NetChoice’s request for an injunction.”

The state’s lawyers wrote, for example, that a court needs to determine which platforms would be subject to the restrictions, based on the revenue and user thresholds included in the law. Also, they said determinations about potential First Amendment violations would require findings about “different levels of editorial choice” involved in each platform’s various functions.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Hernandez Covington issued a 53-page ruling that said the town had adequately shown a history of “customary use” by the public of parts of the beach that are privately owned.

Covington upheld a 2018 ordinance that sought to protect customary use of what are known as “dry sand areas” of the beach for such activities as walking, sunbathing, fishing and building sand castles.

The waterfront property owners argued that the ordinance was an unconstitutional “taking” of their private property.

“The ordinance does not purport to ‘take’ the portion of dry sand beach in the town owned by plaintiffs,” Covington wrote. “Rather, it purports to recognize and protect the customary use rights of those residents who have gained, through custom, the right to make certain uses of that privately-owned beach.”

The Florida Constitution ensures public access to portions of beaches “below mean high water lines,” often described as wet areas of beaches. But Covington’s ruling, which came in two consolidated lawsuits filed by property owners, dealt with dry-sand portions of beaches closer to homes.

Florida lawmakers in 2018 made controversial changes to laws involving customary use. That included putting in place an extensive process for local governments that want to have customary-use ordinances, including requiring them to receive judicial approval.

Redington Beach passed its ordinance in June 2018. If local governments adopted ordinances before July 1, 2018, the state law said they could raise customary use as what is known as an “affirmative defense” if the ordinances were challenged in court.

Covington wrote that, under the law, Redington Beach could “keep its ordinance in effect if the court finds that the town’s evidence establishes by a preponderance of the evidence that the town’s residents and visitors have gained, by way of customary use, the right to use the privately-owned portions of the dry sand beach in the town.”

“The court finds that the evidence provided by the town at trial substantially surpassed the quantum of proof necessary to establish its affirmative defense,” she wrote in a conclusion. “Therefore, the court finds that the town has proven the customary use of the privately-owned dry sand beach in the town, and that those uses are consistent with the limited permitted uses set out in the ordinance. Further, the town has proven that this customary use has been by both town residents and those who may visit the town either as vacation renters or guests of residents.”

In one of the cases, which were consolidated later, U.S. District Judge James S. Moody in 2020 ruled in favor of a group of waterfront property owners. But a panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in 2021, sending the case back to district court.

The data, posted on the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration website, showed 40,499 abortions reported this year as of Aug. 1. That was up from a total of 36,221 reported at the beginning of July and 32.081 reported at the beginning of June.

The 4,278-abortion increase reported Aug. 1 and the 4,140-abortion increase reported July 1 are significantly lower than increases in previous months and during comparable periods last year. The six-week abortion law took effect May 1.

For example, the total in a report issued at the beginning of June represented a 9,672-abortion increase over the total included in a May 1 report.

Similarly, the May 1 total reflected a 7,674-abortion increase over the total included in an April 1 report. And the April 1 report reflected a 6,277-abortion increase over the total included in a March 2 report.

Abortion clinics are required to submit reports to the Agency for Health Care Administration within 30 days after the end of each month. Lags in reporting made it somewhat unclear when the six-week abortion limit started affecting the totals.

US abortion numbers have risen slightly since Roe was overturned, study finds

But the July 1 and Aug. 1 reports offer a two-month window showing reduced numbers of abortions. As another illustration, a report issued at the beginning of August 2023 showed a 6,231-abortion increase from roughly a month earlier — 31% higher than the 4,278-abortion increase during the comparable period this year.

Of the overall total of 40,499 abortions reported this year as of Aug. 1, 37,551 were in the first trimester of pregnancy, 2,945 were in the second trimester and three were in the trimester, according to the Agency for Health Care Administration. Two of the third-trimester abortions were categorized as being performed “due to fatal fetal abnormality,” while the other was categorized as “due to serious fetal genetic defect, deformity or abnormality.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature approved the six-week abortion limit in 2023 after passing a 15-week limit in 2022. The state Supreme Court on April 1 rejected a constitutional challenge by abortion-rights supporters to the 15-week limit.

That ruling also had the effect of allowing the six-week limit to take effect May 1.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court also allowed a proposed abortion-rights constitutional amendment to go on the November ballot, setting up perhaps the state’s biggest political fight of 2024. Abortion-rights supporters have turned to ballot initiatives in Florida and other states after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and left abortion issues to be decided in states.

The proposed Florida amendment says, in part, that no “law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” It would need approval from 60 percent of voters to pass.

Gun Owners of America, the Gun Owners Foundation and gun owner Richard Hughes filed the lawsuit in South Florida and contended that the open-carry ban does not meet a legal test that such restrictions must be consistent with the nation’s “historical tradition” of firearms regulation.

“Despite its reputation as a largely gun-friendly state, Florida inexplicably continues to prohibit the peaceable carrying of firearms in an open and unconcealed manner,” the lawsuit said. “The blatant infringement of the Second Amendment right to ‘bear arms’ runs counter to this nation’s historical tradition and would have criminalized the very colonists who openly carried their muskets and mustered on the greens at Lexington and Concord to fight for their independence.”

The lawsuit comes after Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled Legislature last year eliminated a longstanding requirement that people obtain state concealed-weapons licenses to be able to carry guns. But lawmakers did not allow people to openly carry firearms, drawing criticism from some Second Amendment activists who said the changes did not go far enough.

The lawsuit, which was first reported Monday by Fox News, names as defendants St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson and Thomas Bakkedahl, the state attorney in the 19th Judicial Circuit, which is made up of St. Lucie, Indian River, Martin and Okeechobee counties.

It cites the enforcement of the open-carry ban by Pearson and Bakkedahl, though it does not make clear why they are defendants and other law-enforcement officials are not.

The Florida Supreme Court in 2017, however, upheld the open-carry ban in a case stemming from the arrest of a man in St. Lucie County. Justices, in a 4-2 ruling, said the state law “regulates only one manner of bearing arms and does not impair the exercise of the fundamental right to bear arms.”

The new lawsuit contends that the 2017 decision was wrong based on U.S. Supreme Court precedents.

While Hughes lives in Palm Beach County, the lawsuit said he sometimes goes to St. Lucie County and would like to openly carry a gun while there. For example, it said he goes to a St. Lucie County nature preserve at least once a month with his dogs and attends a Port St. Lucie gun show.

The lawsuit relies heavily on a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 2008. That includes a 2022 decision in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that focused on the “historical tradition” of firearms regulation.

“According to the United States Supreme Court, the only way Florida can justify such an extreme restriction is to show a broad and enduring Founding-era historical tradition of governments banning the peaceable open carry of firearms by law-abiding persons, such that demonstrates that the Founders never understood the Second Amendment to protect open carry in the first place,” the lawsuit said. “That is an absurd proposition and a hurdle that Florida simply cannot bear.”

The lawsuit acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court has not decided an open-carry case, but it said the court’s “decisions nevertheless guide and control the inquiry here and demonstrate that the challenged statute is unconstitutional.”

The National Rifle Association is making similar “historical tradition” arguments as it challenges a 2018 Florida law that prevents people under age 21 from buying rifles and other long guns. A federal district judge upheld the law, but the NRA is challenging the ruling at the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Legislature and then-Gov. Rick Scott approved the age restriction after the February 2018 mass shooting at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where 17 people were killed and another 17 injured.

The proposals, a certain type of legislation known as “claim” bills, will be considered during the 2025 legislative session. The largest amounts of money are sought because of alleged negligence by the Florida Department of Children and Families that resulted in catastrophic injuries to children, but the bills also involve such things as injuries suffered in traffic accidents.

The bills are needed, at least in part, because of a state sovereign-immunity law that generally limits the amounts of money government agencies can be forced to pay in lawsuits to $200,000 or $300,000, depending on how many people are involved. Claim bills allow payments that are higher than the limits.

The 17 proposals were filed before a Friday deadline for claim bills. Other types of bills for the 2025 session will start to be filed later this year. Here are brief descriptions of the five largest claim bills:

— SB 12, filed by Sen. Joe Gruters, R-Sarasota, seeks $28 million to help care for a Sarasota child, identified by the initials L.P., who was stabbed 14 times by her mother in 2015.

The bill said the Sarasota Police Department, which had received a call about mental-health issues involving the mother, contacted the Department of Children and Families about possible child abuse. DCF employees went to the home “but failed to identify the mother of L.P., much less identify several forewarnings as to the mother’s mental health status,” the bill said.

Later, the mother tried to murder the 6-year-old child, including trying to disembowel her, the bill said. A lawsuit led to a jury finding DCF negligent in 2022 and awarding $28 million in damages, but the agency could only pay $200,000 without a claim bill.

— SB 2, filed by Sen. Ana Maria Rodriguez, R-Homestead, seeks $20 million because of injuries suffered by a Fort Myers child, identified by the initials C.C., who overdosed on his mother’s methadone in 2015.

The bill said the child was born in 2014 addicted to methadone because of his mother’s drug abuse and was hospitalized for a month in a neonatal intensive-care unit. The Department of Children and Families received multiple reports before and after the child’s birth about the mother’s drug use and potential child abuse, the bill said.

In September 2015, when the child was 13 months old, he overdosed on methadone and suffered brain and other injuries that will require “lifelong care,” the bill said. It seeks $20 million because of DCF’s alleged negligence.

— SB 18, filed by Gruters, seeks $14.926 million because of “catastrophic and permanent injuries” suffered in 2017 by a child identified by the initials H.H.

The bill said the Department of Children and Families received reports about issues such as drug use, neglect and abuse by the child’s mother and stepfather. After DCF closed two investigations and received other reports, the girl was hospitalized in September 2017 with head and other injuries and was “determined to be the victim of severe, prolonged, repeated, life-threatening physical abuse that caused permanent damage,” the bill said.

The mother and stepfather were charged with child abuse and other crimes and sentenced to prison, the bill said. The $14.926 million, if approved, would be put in a trust for the child, who was about 22 months old at the time of the abuse. The bill does not say where the abuse occurred.

— SB 28, filed by Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, seeks $6.1 million from the South Broward Hospital District because of injuries suffered at birth by a child identified by the initials J.R.

The bill said the child’s mother, Darline Angervil, went to the district’s Memorial Hospital West in January 2014 when she was about 30 weeks pregnant and suffering complications such as high-blood pressure and headaches. The bill said she was diagnosed with the condition preeclampsia and underwent a cesarean delivery more than two days after being admitted to the hospital.

The baby girl weighed 2 pounds, 5 ounces at birth and suffered extensive injuries that require 24-hour nursing care, the bill said. Angervil filed a lawsuit alleging negligent care and reached a $6.4 million agreement with the district in 2023. The district paid $300,000, but passage of a claim bill would be needed to pay the rest of the money.

— SB 6, filed by Rodriguez, seeks $4.1 million after a settlement stemming from a Miami-Dade County bus hitting pedestrian Jose Correa in December 2021.

The bill said Correa was using a crosswalk at an intersection when a bus driver made a left turn and hit him. Correa suffered injuries that included requiring amputation of a leg below the knee, according to the bill.

Correa filed a lawsuit against the county and reached a $4.3 million settlement, the bill said. Under the sovereign-immunity law, the county paid $200,000 but would need legislative direction to pay the remaining $4.1 million.

The Florida Education Association, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers last week filed a 47-page brief arguing that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should uphold a district judge’s decision that the law violated the First Amendment rights of teacher Katie Wood.

“This broad, speech-restrictive law singles out Ms. Wood and other transgender educators, prohibiting them from providing students with the personal titles and pronouns they use as a core expression of their identities in their everyday lives,” the friend-of-the-court brief said. “The First Amendment forbids such laws.”

Lawyers for the state went to the Atlanta-based appeals court in April, after Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a preliminary injunction that blocked enforcement of the 2023 law against Wood. The injunction did not apply statewide or to another plaintiff, AV Schwandes, a nonbinary teacher fired last year by Florida Virtual School, and the underlying lawsuit remains pending before Walker.

A panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments Sept. 24 in Birmingham, Ala., on the Wood injunction.

The pronoun restriction was part of a series of controversial measures that Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers have approved in recent years that focus on transgender people. For example, they have sought to prevent trans minors from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria.

The appeals-court case centers on part of the 2023 law that says a school employee “may not provide to a student his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her sex.” The state defines sex as what was assigned at birth.

In a June brief filed at the appeals court, lawyers for the state said public-school systems have the authority to regulate speech of employees.

“The law doesn’t prohibit teachers from advocating publicly their views on usage of preferred titles and pronouns generally,” the brief said. “Nor does it prohibit teachers from providing their preferred titles or pronouns to other employees in school or from providing them to anyone outside school. But even if the law affected more than a teacher’s personal speech at work, the state’s interests in furthering its educational policies and preventing disruption outweigh the narrow subset of speech that the law regulates.”

The brief added, “Wood does not speak as a private citizen on a matter of public concern when providing to students a personal title and pronouns that do not correspond to Wood’s sex. But even if Wood did, the state’s interests outweigh Wood’s.”

But attorneys for the teachers unions rejected such arguments in their filing last week.
“Simply put, Ms. Wood — like all school employees — uses personal pronouns and titles — ‘she,’ ‘her,’ and ‘Ms.’ — to refer to herself in every aspect of her interactions with others in the workplace, just as we all do in every aspect of our lives,” the union’s brief said. “These pronouns and titles do not owe their existence to her responsibilities as a public employee.”

The brief also contended that the “mandate that transgender educators misidentify themselves is part of a broader effort in Florida to withdraw signs of inclusion in schools, including bans on inclusive symbols such as the pride flag and book bans that are easily weaponized against LGBTQ+ books and authors.”

“Laws that target the speech and viewpoints of vulnerable minority groups — based on ignorance, fear, or a desire to harm — are unconstitutional,” the unions’ brief said. “(The pronoun restriction) is such a law, and certainly not the only one Florida has enacted in recent years. Unfortunately, Florida’s public-school students, families and educators are once again the ones who bear the brunt of this dangerous political theater.”

Insurance Commissioner Michael Yaworsky signed orders that would allow 10 carriers to assume up to 413,808 policies from Citizens as part of what is known as a “depopulation” program.

Based on past rounds of takeouts, the actual number of policies that will move from Citizens into the private market likely will be lower than the approved amounts. But the approvals would help shrink Citizens, which was created as an insurer of last resort but has become Florida’s largest property insurer in recent years.

Yaworsky signed the orders Wednesday, a day before the state Office of Insurance Regulation held a hearing on a proposal by Citizens to pass along double-digit rate increases to customers in 2025. The proposed rate hikes and the depopulation program are both part of efforts to push policies into the private market.

During Thursday’s rate hearing, Citizens President and CEO Tim Cerio presented information that showed regulators in 2023 and 2024 approved proposals by private insurers to assume up to 1 million policies. Of that amount, 407,643 policies had actually been assumed. The 1 million total did not include the approvals signed by Yaworsky this week.

The number of Citizens policies soared in recent years as private insurers dropped customers and raised rates because of financial problems. Citizens reached as many as 1.412 million policies last year and had nearly 1.229 million policies as of last week.

Citizens this summer has added thousands of policies a week as insurers have paused takeouts during the hurricane season, which started June 1. But Citizens officials have expressed confidence that the depopulation program will lead to a reduced number of policies late this year. Cerio said Thursday officials expect the total to drop below 1 million policies by the end of 2024. Hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

State leaders and Citizens officials have long wanted to shrink Citizens, at least in part to reduce financial risks if Florida gets hit by a hurricane or multiple hurricanes. If Citizens did not have enough money to pay claims after a storm, it could pass along extra charges known as “assessments” to policyholders throughout the state, including possibly non-Citizens policyholders.

Under the depopulation program, Citizens customers are required to accept offers of coverage from private insurers if the offers are within 20% of the cost of Citizens premiums. For example, if a homeowner received an offer of coverage from a private insurer that is 19% higher than the Citizens premium, the homeowner would have to accept it.

Yaworsky’s orders this week, however, included barring private carriers from making offers that would be more than 40% higher than what policyholders would pay to renew policies with Citizens. The orders, posted on the Office of Insurance Regulation website, cited “potential harmful impacts to Florida policyholders” from offers higher than 40%.

The vast majority of proposals approved this week involve carriers assuming what are known as homeowners’ multi-peril policies. But some proposals also included taking out wind-only policies, commercial residential policies and commercial non-residential policies. Commercial residential policies can include such things as condominium-association policies and apartment-building policies.

Manatee Insurance Exchange was approved to assume up to 81,000 policies, while Slide Insurance Co. was approved to assume up to 75,600 policies, and American Integrity Insurance Company of Florida was approved to assume up to 65,880, according to the orders.

Also, Southern Oak Insurance Co. was approved to assume up to 50,000 policies; Florida Peninsula Insurance Co. was approved to assume up to 35,000; Monarch National Insurance Co. was approved to assume up to 30,000; Orion180 Select Insurance Co. was approved to assume up to 26,128; and Homeowners Choice Property & Casualty Insurance Co. and TypTap Insurance Co. were each approved to assume 25,000.

In addition, Condo Owners Reciprocal Exchange was approved to assume up to 200 commercial non-residential policies.

The takeouts are targeted for Oct. 22 and Oct. 29, depending on the insurer and policy type, according to the orders.

The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, which would have to sign off on increases, held a three-hour hearing on the proposal, which in part would lead to an average 13.5% rate increase for the most-common type of Citizens policy, known as homeowners’ multi-peril coverage.

That would translate to the average price of homeowners multi-peril policies going from $3,560 to $4,041, said Brian Donovan, chief actuary for Citizens.

Other types of policies would see varying increases, but all averages would be in double digits. For example, condominium-unit owners would see an average 14.2% increase for multi-peril coverage. The hikes would take effect in 2025.

The hearing put on display longstanding tensions surrounding Citizens’ rates, as many homeowners struggle to find affordable coverage — or any coverage — in the private market. Meanwhile, Citizens says it typically charges lower rates than private carriers, which effectively creates a disincentive for property owners to turn to the private market.

“We certainly don’t take our request for a rate increase lightly,” Citizens President and CEO Tim Cerio said during the hearing. “We know that Citizens customers themselves are just like everyone in the private market. Nobody wants to face a rate increase.”

But state leaders and Citizens officials want to shrink Citizens, at least in part to reduce financial risks if Florida gets hit by a hurricane or multiple hurricanes. Citizens in recent years has become by far the largest carrier in the state, with nearly 1.229 million policies as of last week.

“The market is recovering, and that is really good news,” Cerio told reporters. “But Citizens’ rates are actuarially unsound, and we are competing with the private market. The market’s rates are up here, and we are down here. It’s basically a form of subsidized insurance.”

The proposed increases, however, drew opposition from leaders of the group Fair Insurance Rates in Monroe, or FIRM, which has argued for years that residents of the Florida Keys are paying too much for insurance. Homeowners in Monroe County rely on Citizens for what is known as “wind-only” coverage.

“FIRM is totally opposed to this or any other rate increase for Monroe County,” Mel Montagne, the group’s president, said.

State law limits annual increases for Citizens’ customers. For 2025, the law would allow a maximum 14% increase for owner-occupied primary residences, while increases could be as high as 50% for second homes.

But part of the discussion Thursday also centered on another law that says Citizens’ rates should be actuarially sound and not competitive with rates charged by private insurers. In some areas of the state, that has led to Citizens seeking maximum increases to address the competitiveness issue, rather than for actuarial reasons.

“So in a lot of the filings, in a lot of areas, the capping really takes over,” Bob Lee, an actuary for the Office of Insurance Regulation, said.

It likely will be weeks before regulators decide whether to approve the increases or require Citizens to make changes.

Citizens officials say moving policies into the private market could help avoid “assessments” that would occur if Citizens did not have enough money to pay claims after a major hurricane or multiple hurricanes. Such assessments could lead to policyholders throughout the state — potentially even non-Citizens customers — getting hit with additional charges to cover claims.

The number of Citizens policies soared in recent years as private insurers dropped customers and raised rates because of financial problems.

Citizens reached as many as 1.412 million policies in fall 2023 before seeing reductions because of what is known as a “depopulation” program designed to shift policies into the private market. Cerio said Citizens could be under 1 million policies by the end of this year.

— News Service Assignment Manager Tom Urban contributed to this report.