Florida Sen. Jonathan Martin defends SB 1296 during its first committee stop (Feb. 11, 2026) Credit: The Florida Channel

A new proposal from Florida lawmakers that would make it harder for most public employees to form or retain a union poses several constitutionality concerns, according to a staff analysis from the Florida Senate.

Namely, the analysis warns the bill (SB 1296) could infringe on Florida workers’ collective bargaining rights, which are enshrined in the state Constitution. It could also run afoul of the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause and free speech rights.

The proposed legislation, sponsored by Republican Sen. Jonathan Martin, would require a majority of workers in a proposed or existing bargaining unit to vote in favor of unionization for the union to prevail, instead of just a majority of those workers who vote.

Critics — including Democrats and dozens of teachers, bus drivers and local government employees who have publicly testified against the bill — argue this change is hypocritical, since public officials (including state lawmakers) are elected only by a majority of those who vote. Florida Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, D-Ocoee, described the change to union voter thresholds as the “height of hypocrisy.”

The legislation is backed by special interest groups like the Freedom Foundation and Americans for Prosperity that are known to peddle anti-union policies to Republican lawmakers nationwide.

It’s intended to build on earlier, controversial union reforms approved in 2023 (SB 256) that, according to state data, have already wiped out more than 120 public employee unions statewide, including unions that formerly represented public attorneys, nurses, utility workers and all of the state’s adjunct faculty unions. Any contractual protections these employees had under their union contracts have also, consequently, been dissolved.

“I don’t think I have ever read a staff analysis that basically says a bill is an unconstitutional trainwreck.”
Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis

Notably, the new union bill, like the 2023 law, would exempt from these new rules labor unions that represent police, firefighters and correctional officer unions — unions that generally support Republicans like Martin for elected office.

According to the Senate staff analysis, that exemption — creating “two distinct classes of public employees” — could infringe on workers’ collective bargaining rights under the Florida Constitution. “In effect, the bill risks violating those fundamental constitutional rights (speech and collective bargaining) while imposing unequal treatment that may itself constitute a separate constitutional infringement,” the analysis reads.

‘Unconstitutional trainwreck’

Florida is unique in that it is one of only six states in the U.S. that has collective bargaining rights enshrined in the state Constitution, despite its reputation as being hostile territory for labor unions.

While unions do represent hundreds of thousands of workers in Florida’s tourism industry, local and state governments, and the construction and building trades, for example, approximately 94 percent of Florida workers do not have union representation, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Sen. Davis, who’s received endorsements from unions, described Senate Bill 1296 during its first committee hearing Wednesday night as an “unconstitutional trainwreck” based on conclusions from the analysis.

“I don’t think I have ever read a staff analysis that basically says a bill is an unconstitutional trainwreck, since I have been in the Legislature,” said Davis, who was first elected to the Florida House in 2022 before being elected to the Senate in 2025.

“I was not voted to be here to make your life harder,” she added. “I was voted to help Floridians, to make it easy for you so that you can put food on your family’s table. And this bill flies in the face of this.”

Martin, however — who admitted he’s never been a union member — defended the exemption for public safety unions, arguing that public safety workers, like cops, need “protections” from allegations of misconduct or lawsuits filed against them for their actions on the job. Cities (and consequently, taxpayers) pay millions of dollars each year to settle such lawsuits.

“We want to make sure that those public safety unions are represented in a manner that meets the demands and the unique nature of their job, the stresses of their job, the amount of lawsuits that they have to face for interacting with the public in a very fluid situation,” Martin said.

He openly admitted that labor unions can provide protections for cops. “Unions do a good job in many of those cases of making sure that their legal fees are paid and then also contributing to the safety of our communities by making sure that those law enforcement officers are able to get back on the road as soon as possible.”

He failed, however, to clearly explain why police deserve to have protections from their unions, while other public employees — such as teachers, bus drivers, public utility officers and nurses — do not.

“Nurses have incredibly important jobs, and for whatever reason, we haven’t given them lights and sirens,” Martin said. “We’ve made a distinction between nurses and first responders. It doesn’t mean that they’re less important, it just means that the demands of their job is different.”

Some union members in the audience of Wednesday’s committee hearing took issue with that explanation. “We’ve had bus operators save lives on the bus,” said Shawntrell Jackson, a bus operator from Miami who traveled up to Tallahassee to speak against the legislation in-person. Jackson, a member of the Transport Workers Union, said her union was there for her when she was homeless, connecting her with resources to help her get back on her feet.

“I may not be considered a first responder, but when the water goes out, I’m the one you call to get it back on.”

Eddie Carter, a senior project manager and former utility construction inspector for the city of Cape Coral, similarly defended his work.

“I may not be considered a first responder, but when the water goes out, I’m the one you call to get it back on. And this affects my whole family,” Carter said, urging senators to vote against the bill.

Martin’s proposal, similar to legislation filed last year that failed to pass, would also increase the financial penalties for public employee strikes (which haven’t occurred in decades) and would force workers to go through an election process in order to form a union in the first place.

Under current law, public employees can unionize one of two ways: by going through an election or by seeking what’s known as “voluntary union recognition” from their employer, if they can prove that a majority of workers are in support of forming a union. This is generally by getting workers to sign union authorization cards, indicating as much. If the employer is satisfied with these signed cards, the employer can then grant union recognition, thereby negating the need to go through an election process.

This part of the bill wasn’t publicly addressed by Martin, but concerns about restrictions on voluntary union recognition have come up in response to another set of bills (HB 1387/SB 1236) that would disincentivize private sector employers from granting union recognition as well as for committing to remain neutral during a union organizing drive.

Still, another part of Martin’s bill also raises constitutionality concerns, according to the Senate analysis. Namely, a part of the bill that restricts most local and state government workers from engaging in certain union activities while on paid leave. Under the proposal, such barred activities would include supporting or opposing a candidate for public office, distributing union literature, and influencing the passage or defeat of a ballot measure or legislation.

Public safety workers, such as cops, would again be exempted from these restrictions — which could pose a problem, legally. “A public safety employee may be deemed to have greater leeway to engage in certain speech than other union employees, which may be viewed as a restriction on a union member’s right to freedom of speech,” the Senate analysis notes.

Florida Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, who’s sponsoring this legislation in the House (HB 995), has described her bill as “pro-employee,” without offering an explanation for why her “pro-employee” bill doesn’t also apply or extend to police and firefighters.

Fed by lobbyists

Neither Persons-Mulicka nor Martin can claim credit for coming up with this proposal.

Public records obtained by Orlando Weekly in 2024 and 2025 show that the basis of this legislation came from lobbyists affiliated with two right-wing organizations that lobby for anti-union policies across the country: the Freedom Foundation — a think tank headquartered in Washington state that recently launched a teachers’ union “alternative” — and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, based out of Michigan.

Email records (and attached word documents) obtained by the Weekly last year from the Florida House show that the governor’s office and the state Public Employee Relations Commission — a state public sector labor relations agency led by DeSantis appointees — also collaborated on the proposal with Persons-Mulicka.

The state Commission, a small agency of less than 30 staff, has seen its budget balloon in recent years, mostly to handle the increased workload they’ve experienced since the passage of Florida’s controversial union reform law (SB 256) in 2023.

Under that law, unions with a dues-paying membership of less than 60 percent of the workers they represent (since paying dues is voluntary) must go through annual recertification elections in order to remain certified. In order to petition for a recertification election, a union must gather signed cards in support of an election from at least 30 percent of the employees they represent.

The short timeline allowed for this gathering of cards in 2023 drove the massive purge of unions seen in the first year of the law’s implementation. Most of the unions that have been decertified or dissolved by the state so far were dissolved within the first year because the union failed to petition for a recertification election in time, not because workers voted to dissolve.

The law, however, has also significantly increased the number of elections that PERC is forced to conduct each year, thereby overburdening their skeleton staff.

“Since SB 256 passed in 2023, the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC) has experienced a surge in workload across all areas,” the agency wrote in its budget request for the 2026-27 fiscal year. The number of union elections agency staff have conducted annually has ballooned from 20 elections in fiscal year 2022-23 to 250 projected elections in the 2025-26 fiscal year.

“This has overwhelmed staff, causing delays of up to a year in processing recertifications and elections,” the agency (which is in support of Martin’s bill) noted. Since 2023, the agency’s budget has nearly doubled, mostly to hire new staff, from $3.69 million then to roughly $6 million today.

The agency’s budget could also increase to $7.7 million for the next fiscal year under its budget proposal, if approved by state lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is on his way out of the executive office.

What’s next

Senate Bill 1296 cleared its first committee hearing in a 6-3 vote along party lines on Wednesday, while the House version (HB 995) has passed through two committees, also clearing them mostly along party lines. (Tampa Rep. Susan Valdes, a former Democrat, is the only Republican to have voted against HB 995 during its first hearing.)

Both bills have been assigned to three committees. If they clear those, they will need to then be approved by majorities in both the Florida House and Senate. If they do, the legislation will go to Gov. DeSantis for his signature.

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