GLOGood Lookin’ Out

Florida regulations: details

Copied from the chapter Word files on flrules.org, the Florida Department of State’s site on September 22 to 24, 2026. Check the official page before you rely on a rule.

What is here

Release 5: 15,023 rules of the Florida Administrative Code, read by us from the Word files flrules.org serves. Release 1 showed 13,435; Release 2 added 491 rules whose tables our two readers set out differently but with the same words, after a person checked 20 of them row by row against the printed page, and listed 1,378 more repealed or transferred rules. Release 3 adds 103 emergency rules, read from the publisher’s file for each rule because their chapters have no chapter file, lists 2,472 emergency rules whose History line says they were replaced, superseded or repealed, and lists 153 more repealed rules whose History line ends in a citation after the repeal. Release 4, the first from Florida’s backlog, adds 930 rules whose two files print the same words and differ only in capital letters, such as Section and section; we show the chapter file’s text, and the rule’s answer names each word whose capitals differ. Release 5 adds 64 rules after whose History line the chapter file prints the heading of the chapter’s next part (such as PART II LICENSING); the file for the one rule does not print it, and the two files agree on the rule’s caption, text and History line. The heading is not shown as part of the rule; the rule’s answer names it. We copied the files from September 22 to 24, 2026 (every chapter file shown here on September 23). A rule changed after that is not reflected here.
It is not the official compilation. Under section 120.55(1)(a)1, Florida Statutes, the Department of State’s electronic publication is the official Florida Administrative Code, and the Department of State asserts copyright over the Code under section 120.55. We show the rule text as law, under the rule that the text of the law belongs to the public (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., 140 S. Ct. 1498 (2020)). That is our reading, not legal advice.
The publisher keeps two files for most rules: a file for the whole chapter and a file for the one rule. They can differ in wording, punctuation and History lines, and at least once on whether a rule was repealed, and nothing says which is current. We show a rule only where both files agree, or, from Release 4, where they print the same words and differ only in capital letters; the rule’s answer then names each such word. From Release 5, where the chapter file prints the next part’s heading after a rule, we leave the heading out of the rule’s text and name it on the rule’s answer.
We found 33,615 rule numbers: the 28,915 in the publisher’s rule listing and 4,700 more headed only in a chapter file. 2,436 of them are held and not shown, each by name with its reasons: mainly rules whose two files differ, emergency rules our two readers did not both clear (mostly tables and pictures), rules our two readers of the chapter file read differently (mostly tables), and rules printed with no text whose History line we could not confirm ends in a repeal or transfer. A held rule comes back as held, with its reasons and no text. Held is not absent.
16,156 rules the files print with no text and a History line whose last event is a repeal or transfer (or, for an emergency rule, a replacement or supersession), read as the last event even where a citation follows it, are listed with that History line as printed, and no text.
An emergency rule (its chapter number holds ER, as in 64ER21-6) is temporary. Its History line says whether the file records it replaced by a later rule; we do not say whether any emergency rule is in force today.
Florida shipped in three releases and closed after Release 3. Releases 4 and 5 are from its backlog, taken up again in turn with the other closed sources. The rules still held stay held, by name with their reasons; nothing held is shown.
Look a rule up by its number, as in 62-4.050, Fla. Admin. Code R. 62-4.050 or Rule 62-4.050, F.A.C. It comes back with its caption, its text and its History line as the file prints it; a long one comes back in pages, and nothing is cut. A chapter number such as 62-4 lists its rules: shown, listed and held.

How we checked it

Two separate readers, written with no shared code, read every chapter file: one through antiword, one through Word’s own text export. A rule is shown only where both agree on every field: its caption, text, History line, list labels and what follows it.
A third reading of the publisher’s file for the one rule had to agree with the chapter file’s text too.
Rules a converter is known to damage (dropped table cells, symbol characters, a dropped stretch of a file) are held by name, even where the readers agree.
A check run on the whole release confirmed that the shown, listed and held rules add up to every number found, that every held rule has a reason and no other rule has one, that every shown rule has a caption, text and a History line, and, by a second count written separately, that the shown and listed sets are exactly what the release rule names.
Before release, a person compared 20 shown rules drawn at random with the chapter file’s pages as Word prints them. All 20 matched word for word, apart from words Word splits at the end of a printed line.
For Release 2, a person compared the History lines of 20 newly listed rules with the printed page (every one ends in a repeal or transfer), and read every table row of 20 newly shown table rules against the printed page; no row was out of place.
For Release 3, two separate readers (antiword and Word’s own text export, with no shared code) read each emergency rule’s file, and a rule is shown or listed only where both agree on every field. A person compared 35 emergency rules drawn at random (20 shown, 10 listed, 5 held) and 25 rules of the wider History reading with the pages Word prints: every shown and listed word is on the page, apart from words Word splits at the end of a printed line, and every listed History line ends in a repeal, transfer or replacement.
For Release 4, a check compared each rule’s two files word by word: the same words in the same order, the caption and History line the same, and only capital letters different; a second check, written separately, agreed on every rule and every word. A person compared 20 of these rules drawn at random with the chapter file’s pages as Word prints them: all 20 matched word for word, apart from words Word splits at the end of a printed line, and every word whose capitals differ is printed on the page as we show it.
For Release 5, a check took each held rule whose chapter file prints lines after its History line and cleared it only where those lines are one PART heading (PART and a roman numeral, with or without one line of capitals after it), the file for the one rule prints no such lines, and the two files agree character for character on the caption, text and History line; a second check, written separately, agreed on every rule. 28 rules with such a heading stay held because they have no text (their History line says they were repealed or transferred). A person compared 20 of the 64 drawn at random with the chapter file’s pages as Word prints them: all 20 matched word for word, apart from words Word splits at the end of a printed line, and on every one Word prints the heading right after the rule’s History line, followed by the first rule of the next part.
Every comparison, read and ruling was made by one person, with no second reader.

What it can't tell you

Whether a rule is in force or valid.
Whether anything changed after we copied the files in September 2026.
Whether it agrees with the official compilation.
Whether a rule agrees with the printed page, beyond the rules compared with it and the checks above.

Known gaps

2,436 rule numbers are held and not shown. 234 of them are in chapters with no chapter Word file (emergency rules our two readers did not both clear, mostly tables and pictures).
A table that is shown is set out as the converter printed it, with its cells between bars. Our two readers agreed on its words. Of the 491 table rules Release 2 added, 20 were checked row by row against the printed page; the other tables were not checked row by row.
Bold or italic type, underlining and strike-through are not shown; the words are.
Keyword search reads only the shown rules. Held and listed rules have no text here and never match.

Notes you may see on an entry

A held rule: “GLO holds this unit and does not show its text yet, because its readers did not clear it. Its reasons are listed by name.”
A repealed or transferred rule: “The chapter file prints this number with no rule text and a History line whose last event is Repealed or Transferred; GLO lists it by number with that line as printed.”
A rule not in this copy: “Not in this copy of the Florida Administrative Code, neither shown, listed nor held. That never means the rule does not exist.”

Nothing here is legal advice or a judgment that a rule is in force. Full counts for software: the defect_floor field on every Florida result (source=fl).