ORLANDO, Fla. — New legislation meant to protect elected officials and their families from harassment worries government watchdogs who say it would also prevent voters from knowing if their lawmakers live in their districts as required.

The Florida Legislature in April overwhelmingly approved the bill (SB 268), which would exempt disclosure of phone numbers and the full home addresses of a wide range of public officials, including members of the Legislature.

Sponsored by state Sen. Shevrin Jones, D-Miami Gardens, the bill aims to protect public officials and their families from threats, harassment and intimidation. It is now headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis for approval.

State Sen. Jason Brodeur, R-Lake Mary, who co-sponsored the bill, said that several years ago, when he was serving in the Florida House, a brick was thrown at his home’s living room window.

“Critics need to serve in office for 10 minutes before casting stones,” said Brodeur, whose district includes Seminole County and part of Orange County. “I don’t care what nonpublic officials think about it.”

But Bobby Block, executive director of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, said he doubts the bill will prevent officials from being targeted — but is convinced it will hurt government accountability.

“What this law will do is it will make it now impossible … for citizens to know, to be able to check, whether the person that they are voting for or reelecting still lives in the district they purport to represent,” he said.

Block said Floridians’ First Amendment rights are threatened whenever government information is limited. The bill is just the latest in the Legislature’s decade-long effort to carve out exemptions to Florida’s public records laws, he said.

“The Sunshine State is being increasingly the Shady State,” he added.

State Rep. Bruce Antone, D-Orlando, faced an ethics complaint last year from his opponent in the Democratic Party primary who accused him of not living in his district, despite legal requirements to do so by Election Day.

Addresses on multiple official documents — including voter registration forms, property tax records and campaign filings — suggested he did not live in his district, which covers part of Orlando and west Orange County, according to a 2024 report by Fresh Take Florida, a news service of the University of Florida journalism program.

The bill — which Antone supported — would make information used in that investigation inaccessible.

When asked if that story motivated his vote, Antone said he didn’t have “any particular reason” for supporting the bill.

“Like the overwhelming majority of my house of representatives colleagues, I voted for the bill, and 95% of the bills that passed this session passed unanimously,” he said.

The bill would allow someone to see an officials’ city and ZIP code but not their street address. The information that would be available may not be enough to confirm residency of lawmakers since many districts include multiple cities and ZIP codes.

The bill also shields from the public the names of lawmakers’ neighborhoods and GPS coordinates or other data that would identify their home address.

State Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, voted against the bill, one of just two members in the House to do so. She said she sympathizes with other lawmakers’ concerns — she has faced harassment at home — but does not want them addressed by limiting public access to information. Eskamani also said lawmakers shouldn’t have special privileges.

“I’m uncomfortable giving myself special treatment or special privacy just because of the title next to my name,” she said. “At the end of the day, there’s a lot of individuals that are at risk, that are harassed just like we are, and they don’t have that same kind of protection.”

If signed into law by DeSantis, the bill will take effect July 1 and apply to members of Congress and the Florida Legislature, the governor and Cabinet, mayors, county property appraisers and supervisors of elections, school superintendents, school board members and city and county commissioners.

The spouses and adult children of those officials would have the same information exempted, and minor children would have additional information kept private, including their names, birth dates and names and locations of schools or day care facilities they attend.

State law already blocks from the public that information for law enforcement personnel and active or former civilian personnel employed by law enforcement; current or former Supreme Court justices; judges in county, circuit and appeals courts; state attorneys; public defenders; county tax collectors; and clerks of circuit court.

Former state Sen. Randy Fine, elected to Congress in April, said during a committee hearing on the bill in February that the legislation would protect lawmakers, recounting the death threats he said he’d received.

“I may be the only member of the Legislature who has had two people arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned for making death threats,” Fine said. “The last guy is sitting in jail right now because he said he knew where I lived, and he was coming to my house right then and there to kill me and my family, and we had to have law enforcement pull up to our house with sirens blaring and everything else.”

Block, though opposed to the bill, said he worries the sense of fear in American politics contributed to the bill’s passage, noting the April arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who had to flee the governor’s mansion with his family in the middle of the night.

“Lawmakers, public officials, are afraid,” Block said. “They’re afraid of their rivals, they’re afraid of trolls online, they’re afraid of their base, they’re afraid of their opponent’s base. It is a sad indictment of the times in which we live now.”

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