Lawmaker revives bill to repeal Florida’s ‘free kill’ law after Gov. DeSantis veto

The Legislature’s most contentious medical malpractice fight is back.

Just four months after Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed a bill that would have repealed a contentious law that blocks some families from suing for pain and suffering after medical malpractice deaths, Rep. Dana Trabulsy is bringing the issue to the Legislature again.

The Fort Pierce Republican refiled legislation (HB 6003^[1]) identical to the version that passed this past Spring with overwhelming bipartisan support before the Governor rejected it^[2].

At issue is a 35-year-old carve-out in Florida’s Wrongful Death Act^[3] that prevents parents of adults over 25 from recovering non-economic damages, such as grief and loss of companionship, if a hospital or doctor’s error kills them, and bars adult children over 25 from doing the same if their parents die under similar circumstances.

Critics have long labeled the measure “free kill^[4],” arguing it unfairly shields negligent providers while leaving families without recourse. HB 6003 would strike those restrictions, which are unique to Florida^[5].

DeSantis vetoed the 2025 version of the bill (HB 6017^[6]), which Jacksonville Republican Sen. Clay Yarborough carried in the Legislature’s upper chamber, on May 29. He pointed to the proposal’s lack of caps on damages^[7] — a provision that critics of the legislation repeatedly pushed for — as key to his decision, arguing the change would drive up health care costs, worsen physician shortages and destabilize Florida’s insurance market.

In his veto letter^[8] to House Speaker Daniel Perez, the Governor called for future legislation to include limits on payouts to prevent what he described at a subsequent press conference as “jackpot justice^[9].”

Trabulsy’s refiled bill does not include any such caps.

HB 6017, which Orlando Democratic Rep. Johanna López co-prime sponsored with Trabulsy, passed in the House 104-6 and 33-4 in the Senate, with lawmakers from both parties framing the issue as a matter of fairness.

“There’s no difference between a 25-year-and-364-day-old adult and a 26-year-old’s value of life,” Zephyrhills Republican Sen. Danny Burgess said during a Senate floor debate over the measure, calling the current law “one of the most arbitrary of laws we have on our books.”

Ocoee Democratic Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis — who will now serve in the Senate^[10] — agreed.

“Grief does not expire at 25. The bond between a parent and child does not dissolve with age, and the right to seek justice should never be determined by a birthday,” she said, adding that ending “free kill” would erase “a stain on our state’s moral conscience.”

Others argued that passing the legislation without caps would exacerbate Florida’s already steep medical and medical malpractice insurance costs in Florida. Stuart Republican Sen. Gayle Harrell, a health care information technology executive, warned of the measure’s “unintended consequences,” including a potential dearth in health care providers in a state at risk^[11] of suffering marked shortages in doctors and nurses over the next decade.

Passing the bill without limits on payouts would “make it extremely difficult for any provider to come to Florida, when you see what is happening with medical malpractice rates in this state,” she said.

Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Hollywood independent, pushed back on that argument, noting that there is no separate insurance category which excludes “doctors who specialize in making sure they operate on or treat people who have only adult children who can’t recover” damages under Florida law.

“Let’s not race to the bottom,” he said. “Let’s make our doctors better, more responsible.”

Former Navarre Republican Rep. Joel Rudman, a long-practicing physician who left office in January for an unsuccessful congressional run^[12], expressed similar sentiments.

“Doctors aren’t going to leave Florida because of this bill — no good doctor,” he said during one of the bill’s committee stops this year. “If a bad doctor wants to leave, bye.”

Perez said in June that he disagreed with the veto^[13] and would support passing the legislation against next year, telling reporters, “I don’t think that we should determine how much a person’s life is worth when someone negligently ended it.”

But with DeSantis’ veto pen at the ready and a passel of trade groups poised to fight the measure if caps aren’t added — the Florida Chamber of Commerce, Associated Industries of Florida, Florida Medical Association and Florida Justice Reform Institute among them — any such legislative victory promises to be short-lived.

Public testimony during the last Session was dominated by family members who lost loved ones and were barred from suing.

Cindy Jenkins, whose daughter died in Orlando from what she described as “horrific negligence^[14]” at an Orlando hospital, said medical malpractice premiums are high in Florida because Florida has a lot of medical malpractice.

“The way you decrease medical malpractice premiums is to stop medical malpractice,” she said. “My child is a free kill. I have no justice.”

Lauren Korniyenko, whose mother died of an infection following an “uncomplicated” hip surgery, argued that ending “free kill” is congruous with the Governor’s stated goal of tamping down on fiscal irresponsibility.

“In an era focused on greater scrutiny of government spending,” she said, “this law enables the waste and abuse of taxpayer money.”

Karen Aguilar, whose father died in January due to alleged negligence at a Pasco County hospital, derided DeSantis’ description of HB 6017 as “jackpot justice” as nothing short of “disgraceful.”

“No, we’re not sitting here trying to get rich,” she told WFLA^[15] in May. “We want accountability.”

Aguilar wasn’t alone in noting that for most people, losing a 25-year-old child or parent to medical malpractice wouldn’t feel like winning the lottery^[16].

Some medical groups, professionals and business interests pushed back. David Mica Jr. of the Florida Hospital Association said that one-third of rural hospitals in Florida operate at a loss and that opening them to more legal action could cripple them.

“We are talking about receiving care in the areas where we need it,” he said

Shelly Nick, a registered nurse now working in health care risk management, called HB 6017 “compassionate but misdirected” and predicted it would lead to at least 500 additional wrongful death lawsuits yearly.

Sherman “Tiger” Joyce, President of the American Tort Reform Association, lauded DeSantis’ veto as “a decisive stand for fairness and common sense in Florida’s courts.”

“We expect legislation like this in New York, not in Florida,” he said.

Trabulsy argued last Session that insurance rates hadn’t dropped despite the 1990 carve-out and that grieving family members shouldn’t “lose the ability to access the courts just because they were the age of 25, unmarried with no dependents.”

She expressed “deep disappointment^[17]” over DeSantis’ decision to block her bill, adding that she was “not surprised” but “heartbroken nonetheless.”

“We are the only state that shields bad actors from accountability in such a sweeping way,” she said. “Florida families are counting on us to restore justice and to restore value to every life lost too soon.”

Florida Politics contacted Trabulsy for comment on this story, but did not receive a response by press time.

HB 6003 is the first bill Trabulsy filed for the 2026 Legislative Session, which starts in full^[18] on Jan. 13. The bill does not yet have a Senate companion.

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