The Florida Senate

Enter a search term in the search box. Bills evolve into different versions as they are amended throughout the legislative process. "Current Bill Version" is selected by default and will only return search results for the latest version of bills in the selected session. Choose "All Bill Versions" to search for the term in all versions of all bills in the selected session. Choose "Include Amendments" to also search all amendment text.

The "All Bill Versions" and "Include Amendments" options only apply to search terms.

Search Features

• Stemming - Your search result may contain suffixes of the word used. This is called stemming. For example: If you search for the word bicycle, your search will return a broad result on bicycle, bicycles, and bicycling.
• Wildcards - If stemming does not return a broad enough result, use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard at the end or beginning of a word, or for a portion of a word. For example: If you type govern* in the Search box, the search will return a broad result on Govern, governs, governed, governing, government, governmental, governor.
• Multiple-word Searches - Two or more words separated by a comma. Will find returns that contain each word.
• Phrase Searches - Similar to multiple-word searches, except words are not separated by a comma. When federal census is entered into the search box, returns contain both federal and census.
• Quotation Marks - Put quotation marks around multiple words for results with the words together. When "federal census" is entered into the search box, returns contain federal census together.
• Boolean Operators - Specify words, exclude words, or add complex combinations of words to be queried by using Boolean Operators. Boolean Operators should be represented by words (and, or, not) and not symbols (&, |, ^).
  • AND logic retrieves records in which all terms are present. A search for dog and cat will return records with both dog and cat. The more terms you combine in a search with AND logic, the fewer results you will retrieve. A search for dog and cat and fish will result in fewer returns than just dog and cat.
  • OR logic retrieves all the unique records containing one term, the other term, or both of them. OR logic is most commonly used to search for synonymous terms or concepts, such as "college or university". A search for dog or cat will result in records that have at least one of the terms.
  • NOT logic excludes records from your search results. A search for dog not cat will result in records that mention dog but do not mention cat. Be careful when using NOT. The term you want may be present in records that also contain the word you wish to avoid.

The vast majority of bills cite the Florida Statutes, however they can also cite the Florida Constitution or Laws of Florida.

Florida Statutes

Use the Citation search field to determine which bills (latest version) cite sections of the Florida Statutes. Citations are formatted as “chapter.section”. If you add a number without a “.”, such as “120”, the search engine will automatically add a “.” at the end, so the search will return results for all bills that cite sections in Chapter 120—including bills creating new sections in Chapter 120.

To search for specific section citations, you must include the chapter number, such as “120.555”. Bills cite the current version of the Florida Statutes at the time the bill is filed. For example, the 2013 Statues were published to reflect the changes that were made during the 2013 Legislative Session. Statute citations for bills in the 2014 Legislative Session cite the 2013 Florida Statutes.

Florida Constitution

Use the Citation search field to determine which bills (latest version) cite sections of the Florida Constitution. Citations are formatted as “article, section”. The field will accept roman or arabic numerals, separated by a comma or period. If you add a number without a comma or period, such as “10”, the search engine will automatically add a “.” at the end, so the search will return results for all bills that cite sections in Article 10—including bills creating new sections in Article 10.