Florida Sexting Laws Reform Effort

In the final days of this Florida legislative session, one of the items on the agenda is reform of Florida’s outdated laws regarding what is known today as “sexting”.

As the law stands now, teens who send explicit photos to each other could face felony child pornography charges, and a lifetime as a registered sex offender. But clearly the laws against child pornography were not written in an era when every teen had a camera connected to the internet inside their phone. And few people equate a teen sending a picture of himself/herself ( even a sexually explicit one) as the same thing as an adult trafficking in child pornography.The proposed bill would take these harsh penalties off the table, and set up a more rational response to incidents of teen sexting.

The new law if passed, would make the penalty 8 hours of community service on a first offense. Only on a third offense would the charges escalate to a felony level offense.