TALLAHASSEE – As the scheduled end of the legislative session nears and committees are slated to stop meeting after Tuesday, some bills that had a fighting chance in January are now on life support.

With less than two weeks remaining in the regular session, only 15 bills have been sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ desk.

Last year the Legislature sent 262 bills to DeSantis.

Of those bills, 248 were signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, 11 were vetoed and three became law without his signature.

This year, the Senate and the House have clashed on numerous issues, from Senate President Ben Albritton’s Rural Renaissance package, to property tax reform and education.

Here’s a look at five of the bills that have been caught up in the fray and might not make the cut for 2026:

Fetal personhood

For the third time Sen. Erin Grall, R-Fort Pierce, this year filed a measure (SB 164) to give parents the ability to sue for damages for the wrongful death of an unborn child.

The bill defines “unborn child” as “a member of the species Homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”

While the bill passed its first two committee stops, it hasn’t moved since late January. Opponents say it’s a roundabout way of creating “fetal personhood,” a term that refers to the belief that a fetus should be recognized as a legal and moral person with rights, often including the right to life, from the moment of conception.

Abortion advocates warned it would cause a chilling effect among health care practitioners, and medical malpractice insurers said it would create more opportunities for frivolous lawsuits.

The House passed its version of the bill (HB 289) in January, but it hasn’t moved to the floor of the Senate.

Paper straws

Florida lawmakers have passed many bills preempting local laws in recent years but a ban on local governments banning of single-use plastic straws.

Miami Beach, St. Petersburg, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach all have such bans in place.

Those cities enacted bans on single-plastic straws and stirrers, to require restaurants and businesses to be environmentally friendly by using paper straws instead.

The bills (SB 958/HB 865) would have preempted local municipalities from implementing single-use plastic straw bans without adding environmental requirements for alternatives.

The Republican-sponsored bill cited studies that show paper straws contain forever chemicals and can cause potential health risks, more than plastic straws.

While the Senate bill is stalled in its second committee stop, the House bill hasn’t moved.

E-Verify

Businesses with fewer than 25 employees can rest easy for one more year – a universal E-Verify bill doesn’t look like it will make it through the 2026 session.

The House passed HB 197 on January 15, the first week of the session, but the bill hasn’t moved in the Senate.

In 2023, the Senate attempted to require E-Verify for all businesses in SB 1718, but the final version of the bill set a limit of 25 employees, which is the law today.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has positioned Florida at the forefront of illegal immigration enforcement, but the GOP-led Legislature has failed to pass an E-Verify requirement on all businesses.

State bird

Another battle of the birds has gone nowhere, even though legislators and Floridians alike are passionate about the issue.

A bill (HB 11) that would remove the mockingbird as Florida’s official state bird replace it with the American flamingo while naming the Florida scrub-jay as the official state songbird passed the House on a 112-1 vote in January. But it looks dead in the Senate, where it has only moved through one committee.

The mockingbird has been Florida’s state bird since 1927, but is also the state bird for Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.

This was Rep. Jim Mooney’s third attempt at trying to change Florida’s state bird from the mockingbird to the flamingo.

Guns

A bill that would have lowered the age to buy a rifle from 21 to 18, repealing a provision from legislation passed after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 that left 17 dead, including 14 children, doesn’t look like it will have enough support to make it to DeSantis’ desk.

The bill (HB 122) sponsored by Rep. Tyler Sirois, R-Merritt Island, was one of the first bills passed by the House this year.

But since it hasn’t budged in the Senate.

Lowering the age to buy a long gun has been a priority of the House for the past couple of years. House Republicans have tried to pass a version of the bill in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

But the Senate hasn’t gone along, choosing to stay committed to the 2018 law that raised the age to 21. There is no Senate version of the bill.