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Alondra O.
Outstanding Attorneys and Legal Team. Lopez, Justin, and Daisy were quick to answer my questions and handled my accident case with speed and courtesy. The outcome was much better than I anticipated.
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Kathy W.
Maybe a friend mentioned it at work. Maybe you saw it on Facebook. Maybe you typed “Florida PIP” into Google and the answer at the top of the page told you flatly that Personal Injury Protection ended on July 1, 2026.
If you came away believing Florida no longer has no-fault insurance, you are in good company, and you were misinformed.
The short answer: Florida did not repeal PIP. Personal Injury Protection is still required. Every deadline that governed your car accident claim last year governs it today.
We are writing this because the rumor is not harmless. Believing it can cost an injured person their entire claim, and we would rather explain that now than explain it to you after the fact.
What actually happened in Tallahassee
Two bills in the 2026 legislative session would have ended Florida’s no-fault system.
Senate Bill 522, filed by Senator Grall, would have repealed the roughly dozen statutes that make up the Florida Motor Vehicle No-Fault Law and replaced the PIP requirement with mandatory bodily injury coverage at 25/50/10 limits. House Bill 769 was its counterpart in the House.
Neither one passed. Both died in committee on March 13, 2026, the day the session closed. SB 522 died in the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee. HB 769 died in the House Civil Justice and Claims Subcommittee. Neither reached a floor vote in its own chamber, let alone the Governor’s desk.
So where did “July 1, 2026” come from?
This is the part that explains most of the confusion.
That date appears in the text of a different bill — House Bill 1181, filed in the 2025 session. It was the date the repeal would have taken effect if that bill had become law. It didn’t. HB 1181 was withdrawn from consideration.
A proposed effective date written inside a bill that never passed is not a change to Florida law. But it reads like one if you pull it out of context, and that is exactly what happened across a lot of websites in early 2026.
Here is a detail worth knowing if you go looking at bill records yourself: SB 522’s own page lists an effective date of January 1, 2027. That does not mean anything is changing on January 1, 2027. It means that is the date the bill would have used. The bill is dead. The field is just still sitting there on the page.
The way to tell whether a bill actually became law is the Last Action line. A bill that passed shows a chapter law number. SB 522 and HB 769 show that they died in committee.
Why so many websites got this wrong
In May 2026, Insurance Journal, a trade publication for the insurance industry, not a law firm, published a detailed correction on this. It traced the rumor’s spread through law firm blog posts and insurance agency pages, many of which had written about the proposed repeal as though it were already settled and then never went back to update the article after the bills died.
It also identified a second amplifier: AI-generated search summaries, which pulled from that stale content and presented a proposed effective date as current law. Lisa Miller, a former Florida deputy insurance commissioner, summarized the 2026 session on PIP about as directly as it can be put, nothing happened.
Several of those incorrect articles are still online today.
What Florida law actually requires right now
Under Florida Statute § 627.736, if you own and register a vehicle in Florida:
- You must carry $10,000 in Personal Injury Protection coverage, plus $10,000 in property damage liability.
- PIP pays 80% of reasonable and medically necessary medical expenses and 60% of lost gross income, up to the combined $10,000 limit, regardless of who caused the crash.
- There is a $5,000 death benefit payable to surviving family.
- You must receive initial medical services and care within 14 days of the crash. Miss that window and your PIP medical benefits are not reimbursable at all.
- Accessing the full $10,000 in medical benefits requires a determination that you had an emergency medical condition. Without that determination, medical benefits are capped at $2,500.
Separately, and this is current law, not a rumor, Florida moved to a modified comparative negligence standard in 2023. If you are found to be 51% or more at fault for your own injuries, you are barred from recovering damages from the other party entirely.
Why the rumor is dangerous, not just wrong
Read that 14-day rule again, and then think about what someone does if they believe PIP no longer exists.
They have no reason to see a doctor within two weeks. No reason to call their own insurer and open a claim. No reason to make sure an emergency medical condition gets documented while the evidence is fresh.
In our experience, that 14-day deadline ends more claims than any proposed legislation ever would have. It catches careful, reasonable people, the ones who felt sore but figured they would wait and see, or who assumed the at-fault driver’s insurance would sort it out. By the time they call a lawyer, the benefits they paid for are simply gone.
If you were in a crash anywhere in Polk County this summer, on I-4 through Lakeland, on US-27, on the Polk Parkway, or on a two-lane road outside Bartow, and you delayed treatment because you read that PIP was repealed, call someone today rather than tomorrow. The math on those 14 days does not care why you waited.
How to check this yourself
We would rather you verify this than trust any website, including ours.
- SB 522 (2026): look at the Last Action field
- HB 769 (2026): search “769” for the 2026 session at flsenate.gov
- Florida Statute § 627.736: available under Laws → Florida Statutes at flsenate.gov
- The Insurance Journal correction, published May 5, 2026
If the Legislature does eventually repeal PIP, it will be on those pages first, with a chapter law number attached, and a Governor’s signature behind it. Repeal bills have been filed in Tallahassee nearly every year, and one did pass both chambers back in 2021 before it was vetoed. This will likely come up again in the 2027 session. But filing is not passing, and passing is not signing.
Until then, the law that applies to your crash is the law that has applied for decades.
If you have questions about a Polk County crash
López & Humphries, P.A. has represented injured people in Polk County and throughout Central Florida since 2009. If you have been in a crash and you are unsure what your coverage requires of you, or you have already missed a deadline and want to know what options remain, we offer free consultations. Contact us today.
