Florida Adds New Teen (Anti) Sexting Law — Here Are All of the Official Documents
- By : Cbh
- Category : law & order, Uncategorized
There has been a rush of news stories about Florida’s new anti-sexting law which went into effect October 1, 2011. Unfortunately, much of the coverage is inconsistent: for example, CNN describes the new law as “easing” the penalties for this type of lewd behavior. The Sun Sentinel/Palm Beach Post simply pointed out that the new law now specifically refers to “sexting” and makes it a crime (but doesn’t clarify that, previously, sexting was a crime with potentially harsher penalties under more general statutes).
Historically, the bill was proposed in December 2010, voted on in the House and Senate without a single “nay” vote, and signed by the Governor in June. The statute creates new law, Florida Statute 847.0146. Few, if any, of the news reports provides the news statute number which hampers finding the original text. As of this writing, Florida’s Online Sunshine is not updated with the new law. In short, it is hard to find the new law.
But no worries…
a good summary of the SB is here.
The history of the bill(s) is here.
The House Bill Analysis is here (provides the background analysis of the bill).
And the bill/law is here.