Politics
Claims bill clearing $1.2M payment to Pasco man maimed in school bus crash advances to House floor
Florida lawmakers are closer than they’ve ever been to helping a man who suffered life-altering injuries in a devastating crash nearly two decades ago.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously for HB 6507, which would authorize Pasco County Schools to pay $1 million to Marcus Button and $200,000 to his mother, Robin Button, for pain, suffering, costs and lost wages due to a 2006 collision with a school bus.
The bill is now heading to the House floor. So far, it hasn’t received a single “no” vote in the chamber.
Meanwhile, the bill’s Senate twin (SB 8) has cleared two of three committee stops. That’s further than any prior version of the measure has gotten since former Sen. Mike Fasano filed the original legislation in 2010.
HB 6507 and SB 8 are claims bills, a special classification of legislation intended to compensate a person or entity for injury or loss due to the negligence or error of a public officer or agency.
Claims bills arise when appropriate damages exceed what is allowable under Florida’s sovereign immunity law, which protects government agencies from costly lawsuits by capping payouts — today — at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per incident. For payments beyond those sums, legislative action is necessary.
Marcus Button was 16 on Sept. 22, 2006, when his friend was driving him to their high school. A school bus driver pulled out in front of Jessica Juettner’s car on State Road 54. It was later determined that bus driver John E. Kinne, whose only other passenger was a backup driver, failed to yield the right-of-way.
The car struck the bus between its wheels, slipping under the larger vehicle. Button, who was riding in the front seat and allegedly not wearing a seatbelt, struck the windshield headfirst, sustaining facial and skull fractures, brain damage and vision loss.
Button had to relearn to walk, still suffers from pain, is mostly blind in his right eye and has no sense of smell, among other chronic issues. He also now speaks with a British accent due to foreign accent syndrome, a speech disorder associated with traumatic brain injury. He also endures visual and auditory hallucinations that contribute to chronic paranoia.
Button’s parents sued the Pasco County School Board in 2007 and ultimately won a $1.38 million settlement for Button and $289,000 for themselves. But Button and his mother have seen just $163,000 due to Florida’s statutory limits.
For the past two years, Tallahassee Sen. Corey Simon and Pensacola Rep. Alex Andrade, both Republicans, have been sponsoring Button’s claims bill. They were the first to take up the cause since 2020, when former Senate Democratic Leader Audrey Gibson filed a comparable measure with no House companion.
It died without a hearing, as did prior efforts by former Republican Sen. Miguel Díaz de la Portilla in 2012 and 2013, and former Republican Sen. Denise Grimsley in 2014, 2015 and 2017.
The Pasco County School Board supports Simon and Andrade’s legislation.
Legislation to better safeguard kids online while giving parents and police more tools to fight and catch pedophiles just cleared its last committee stop in the House after undergoing some notable changes.
The House Commerce Committee voted unanimously for HB 743, the Legislature’s latest proposal aimed at tamping down on web-based predation of Florida youths.
Escambia County Republican Rep. Michelle Salzman, one of the measure’s sponsors, said the “responsible, narrowly crafted” changes it proposes will help curb “one of the most heinous crimes imaginable.”
“We owe it to these children and to the families shattered by the crimes,” she said. “Let’s give law enforcement and prosecutors every possible chance to hold traffickers accountable.”
Salzman amended her bill Tuesday to change its scope. Rather than require social media platforms to give law enforcement blanket access to a minor’s account after receiving a warrant or parental consent, the companies would have to disclose “any technically feasible and reasonably available data” to a police officer if given a court order, subpoena or search warrant.
The amended bill also removed a requirement that social media platforms allow parents and legal guardians to view their 14- and 15-year-olds’ online messages. Instead, under the strike-all language, platforms would need only to allow parents and legal guardians to view a list of the account names with which their child exchanged messages.
Social media platforms would also have to delete all personal information for any account, regardless of the account holder’s age, within 45 days of its termination by the user unless there are legal requirements to maintain the data.
One provision that carried over unchanged from the bill’s prior iteration would prohibit social media companies from allowing users under 14 to access messages designed to disappear or self-destruct after a certain time period, like those on Snapchat and Instagram.
HB 743 differs from its upper-chamber companion (SB 868) by Spring Hill Republican Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, which targets end-to-end encryption that many platforms use to protect their systems and users from privacy breaches. Both bills pend floor votes after clearing their respective committee assignments.
ACLU Florida and TechNet, a technology advocacy group, signaled opposition to HB 743. Florida Family Voice and Florida Prosecuting Attorneys signaled support.
State Attorney Jack Campbell of the 2nd Judicial Circuit said the bill is a necessary step toward protecting kids where predators hunt them today.
“People who are looking for children don’t go to playgrounds anymore; they go to chatrooms,” he said. “Unfortunately, while the internet has been an extraordinarily powerful tool, that tool like many tools can be used for great evil, and due to greater levels of encryption, greater sophistication in social media, that is where pedophiles are meeting their victims. And this is where the evidence is.”
Merritt Island Republican Rep. Tyler Sirois, HB 743’s other sponsor, noted that despite the bill’s intended effects, no one representing a social media company attended the meeting to speak for or against it.
“They could have filled out a speaker card and offered some constructive feedback in terms of what they’re going to do proactively in order to protect our kids online,” he said. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, everything I’ve seen from them (shows) they don’t give a damn about our kids. We all need to be paying more attention to that.”
HB 743 adds to legislation (HB 3) state lawmakers passed in 2024 limiting minors’ access to social media platforms, including prohibiting kids 13 and younger from opening and maintaining accounts and requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to do so.
That restriction is now being challenged in court.
The federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which has been in effect since April 2000, requires social media companies to get verifiable parental consent before collecting personal information about their children, though few believe it’s been effectively enforced.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 1 in 5 children per year receive unwanted sexual solicitation online. One in 33 are targets of aggressive sexual solicitation, which involves pushes by the culprit to make offline contact. And at any given time, some 50,000 predators are on the internet actively seeking out children.
Cars could soon rocket down highways as fast as 75 miles per hour.
The House is roaring ahead with a possible increase for speed limits on Florida highways.
The House Commerce Committee advanced a transportation package (HB 567) that covers an array of issues involving transportation.
One aspect that could immediately impact Florida drivers would be the boost of the maximum allowable vehicle speed on limited access highways to 75 miles per hour, up from 70 mph now. It would also raise speed limits on other highways outside urban areas from 65 mph to 70 mph, and would allow the Florida Department of Transportation to set speed limits on all other roadways as high as 65 mph.
Rep. Fiona McFarland, a Sarasota Republican, said the idea was discussed among Representatives during the Legislative Session.
“Floridians just want to get where we’re going faster,” she said.
In committee, McFarland also presented changes to the package to allow drivers to contest citations issued through cameras at school bus stops. The bill would also prohibit public airports from charging landing fees for colleges during test flights.
The legislative package sped through committee with little debate and no votes against it. That’s the third stop for the bill, which hasn’t been slowed by a single “no” vote.
That means the bill is now ready to swerve onto the House floor for a vote there.
The Senate also included speed limit boosts in its own transportation package, which already blew through its last committee stop. That bill (SB 462) was just scheduled for the Senate Special Order Calendar for Wednesday.
Of note, both chambers opted to include the speed hike in transportation omnibus bills.
That’s a different approach than one taken more than a decade ago when the Legislature also felt a need for speed. In 2014, after passing a bill dealing exclusively with speed limits, former Gov. Rick Scott slammed the brakes on the effort with his veto pen.
Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t publicly commented on the speed limit proposal this year. But if he were to object, he would have to nix whatever full package the Legislature chooses to pass this Session.
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