Florida Marsy's Law

What Marsy's Law actually does

Florida voters passed Marsy's Law in 2018 as a constitutional amendment. It expanded crime victims' rights including the right to be informed of proceedings, the right to confer with prosecutors, and — the part that matters here — the right to prevent the disclosure of information that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim's family.

For most crime victims, Marsy's Law operates exactly as you'd expect: it lets the victim ask that their name and identifying information be withheld from public release. The prosecutor's office and the agency holding the record are required to honor the request.

When officers tried to use it

The contested application started almost immediately. Florida law enforcement agencies began invoking Marsy's Law on behalf of officers involved in use-of-force incidents, arguing that an officer who is the subject of an attempted assault during an incident is a "crime victim" entitled to the disclosure protections. Under that theory, the officer's name would be redacted from the incident report.

This produced a lot of litigation. On November 30, 2023, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in City of Tallahassee v. Florida Police Benevolent Association, SC2021-0651, that Marsy's Law does NOT grant an officer — or any other crime victim — a categorical right to withhold their name from disclosure. The court's reasoning: name-withholding is not enumerated in Article I §16(b), and reading it in would conflict with the accused's right to confront witnesses under §16(a) and the public-records right under Article I §24(a). The court stopped short of deciding whether officers can be Marsy's Law "victims" at all — it ruled only on the name question.

Post-ruling, application of Marsy's Law to officers varies. Some agencies still invoke it in narrow circumstances — for example, when an officer's family member has received a specific threat. Other agencies have stopped invoking it for officers altogether.

The honest summary: Marsy's Law is a real tool for crime victims. As a default name-redaction shield for officers, it's done.

What might change in 2026

The Florida legislature is considering a proposal that would shield officer identities for 72 hours after an assault or threat incident — a workaround for the Tallahassee ruling that uses statute instead of the constitutional amendment. As of March 2026 the bill is pending, not enacted. Don't plan around it until it passes.

What it doesn't reach

Marsy's Law is a constitutional amendment focused on the criminal proceedings context. It doesn't reach:

1. Data brokers and commercial data sources. Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, and the rest hold addresses they obtained from public records that pre-date any Marsy's Law invocation.
2. Property records, voter rolls, court filings outside the criminal context. Civil suits, divorce, traffic court — Marsy's Law doesn't reach those.
3. Federal records. Federal cases are governed by federal law.

What we do

Marsy's Law is for the proceedings. We handle the broker-side digital exposure that Marsy's Law was never designed to address. Standard opt-outs across 200+ broker sites, re-checked every two weeks.

For Florida first responders specifically, the practical privacy stack is:

• F.S. §119.071(4)(d) — written election with each agency holding personnel records (this is the workhorse). If your agency doesn't have a standing form, the agency confidentiality election template covers it.
• County property appraiser redaction — separate request to redact home address from property tax records
• Marsy's Law — situational, in incident-specific contexts where appropriate
• Address Confidentiality Program — substitute-address program for survivors of qualifying offenses

Use the tools that fit. Marsy's Law isn't the everyday tool for officers. §119.071 is.