The American Tort Reform Association’s (ATRA) recent release of the 2025-26 Judicial Hellholes Report is a vivid reminder of just how far Florida has come, and how much smart policy can reshape a state’s legal climate. For years, Florida was a fixture on ATRA’s notorious list, a distinction no state seeks and one that long defined the instability of our civil justice system.
But that reputation changed only because lawmakers had the courage to act.
The landmark reforms passed in 2022 and 2023 didn’t just chip away at lawsuit abuse; they reversed more than a decade of deteriorating legal conditions. Once volatile insurance markets are stabilizing, and Florida is on a path that other states now look to emulate. The state’s transformation shows what is possible when leaders prioritize fairness, predictability, and the long-term health of the state’s economy.
Yet now, in the run-up to the 2026 legislative session, Florida is teetering on the edge of a full-scale reversal. And let’s call it what it is: the Trial Lobby and the Billboard Attorney industry have seized control of the Florida House agenda. Their mission is simple — unwind the reforms that cut into their profit model and drag Florida right back into the swamp ATRA spent years warning us about.
Several proposed bills that failed last cycle are being considered again. The measures being reviewed aim to reinstate one-way attorney fees, inflate medical damages, expand liability for government entities, and reopen the door to high-volume insurance lawsuits. If passed, Florida will inevitably be fast-tracked back onto the ‘Judicial Hellhole’ list, and the very mechanisms that transformed Florida into a litigation magnet in the first place will be reinstalled.
Worse still, this will have a detrimental impact on our state’s residents. Floridians can expect to see higher insurance premiums for homeowners and drivers, fewer insurers willing to write policies in Florida, increased costs for small businesses, and a court system clogged with low-value, attorney-driven cases.
The billboard lawyers know this. They’ve known it all along. They want Florida’s legal environment to look more like it did before the reforms of 2023, and less like the state that protects consumers, businesses, and taxpayers we have today.
Governor DeSantis’s tort reform packages were not a partisan victory; they were a Florida victory. They demonstrated that smart policy can balance accountability with fairness and that curbing lawsuit abuse benefits everyone except those who exploit the system.
The 2026 session will be a defining moment. Lawmakers must decide whether Florida remains a national model for tort reform or whether we allow special-interest trial lawyers to drag us backward into the very “Judicial Hellhole” we fought so hard to escape.
Author: Tom Gaitens, Executive Director, Florida Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (FL-CALA)