A pair of Florida bills that would have tightened anti-drowning measures for the state’s residential pools failed in subcommittee meetings this April.
New legislation was proposed this year that would have expanded the state’s safety requirements to mandate that residential pools built or remodeled prior to 2000 must have at least one of five safety features to prevent drowning.
The current law, known as the Preston de Ibern/McKenzie Merriam Residential Swimming Pool Safety Act, requires residential pools built or remodeled after 2000 to have one of those safety features in place to pass final pool inspection.
Safety features include a barrier surrounding the pool; an in-water alarm; a self-latching device on doors; a pool safety cover; or an alarm on any doors and windows with direct access to the pool.
House Bill 93 and Senate Bill 604, introduced this year to make those regulations retroactive, failed in subcommittee meetings. HB 93 died without a single vote or hearing; SB 604 was postponed in April and never resurfaced.
That may have been because, in addition to making the safety feature requirement retroactive, the bills would have required a title company or inspector to report any violations to law enforcement, presumably at the time that the home was being sold.
The effect of the legislation would have meant that every private residence in Florida with a pool — an estimated 1.5 million homes — would have been required to have at least one of the five anti-drowning safety features.
Neither bill seems to have had much of a chance; similar bills (introduced by both Democrats and Republicans) have been proposed since 2000 and have had similar fates.
Image credit: https://poolfence.com/ https://poolfence.com/ One objection is that it is more appropriate to have the measures written into the building code rather than state law.
But Alan Korn, former executive director and general counsel of the advocacy group “Safe Kids USA” and a proponent of the measures, says it’s useful to tie the anti-drowning safety features requirement to the sale of the house, similar to the requirements to have smoke alarms.
“It’s to take advantage — for public safety purposes — the transaction of a sale, so that when you sell a home, there’s someone who takes a look at the pool and makes sure it has the safety devices that are there to prevent, primarily, little children from gaining unfettered access to a pool,” he said.
For the 2025 legislative season, the measures failed, but drowning prevention advocates say they will continue to push until the law changes.
