Florida has one of the most broadly written and most actively enforced HIV criminalization frameworks in the country. These laws were written in 1986 and 1997, when HIV was a death sentence, when effective treatment didn't exist, and when fear drove policy. The science has completely changed. The laws have not.
Over the decades, more than 600 people in Florida have been arrested under HIV-specific statutes. Most of them didn't infect anyone. Some used condoms. Some were undetectable. A few didn't even have physical contact with the other person. It didn't matter. Under Florida law, exposure alone — not transmission, not intent — is a crime.
This page covers what the law actually says, who it's been used against, the long fight to change it, and what you can do right now to protect yourself if you're living with HIV in Florida.
This is a Florida-focused resource. HIV criminalization is a national problem — 32 states still have laws that criminalize people living with HIV. For the full national picture, including the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act and national reform organizations, see the National HIV Criminalization Overview →
The Law: What Florida's Statutes Actually Say
Florida has four HIV-specific criminal laws. None of them require actual transmission of HIV. None require intent to transmit. You can be convicted even if your partner didn't get HIV — even if transmission was medically impossible.
Fla. Stat. § 384.24(2) — Non-Disclosure Before Sex[1]
If you know you have HIV, have been informed that you can transmit it through sex, and then have sexual intercourse with someone without telling them you have HIV and getting their consent, you have committed a crime.
First offense: Third-degree felony — up to 5 years in prison.
Repeat offense: First-degree felony — up to 30 years in prison.
What doesn't matter under this law: Whether you used a condom. Whether you were undetectable. Whether transmission was actually possible.
Fla. Stat. § 775.0877 — Criminal Transmission (Enhancement)[2]
If you are convicted of any of a long list of offenses — including sexual battery, assault, battery, or child abuse — and you test positive for HIV after that conviction and then commit another similar offense, you can be charged additionally with "criminal transmission of HIV."
Penalty: Third-degree felony (up to 5 years), charged separately on top of the underlying offense.
Important: No transmission has to occur. Consent is a defense only if the other person knew you were HIV-positive, knew what that meant, and agreed anyway.
Fla. Stat. § 381.0041(11)(b) — Blood and Organ Donation[3]
If you know you have HIV and donate blood, plasma, organs, or other tissue, you can be charged with a third-degree felony.
Fla. Stat. § 796.08(4) — HIV and Sex Work[4]
For someone living with HIV, the act of engaging in prostitution — or even offering to — is a third-degree felony, not a misdemeanor as it would be for someone without HIV. This applies even when no sex actually occurs and even when the risk of transmission is near zero.
The bottom line: Florida criminalizes behavior, not harm. You can be a felon for having sex while HIV-positive without disclosing your status — even if you were undetectable, used a condom, and your partner was never at risk. The law doesn't care about science. It cares about disclosure.
The Science the Law Ignores
Florida's statutes were written in 1986 and 1997. HIV science has advanced almost unrecognizably since then. What the law calls "criminal transmission" often involves conduct that carries no realistic risk of transmitting HIV at all.
The CDC states plainly that HIV is not transmitted through saliva, and that there is "no chance of transmission" through spitting. Documented biting transmissions worldwide are described as negligible: a systematic review of published cases found zero HIV transmissions attributable to spitting and only a handful of confirmed transmissions from bites, all involving severe trauma, extensive tissue damage, and the presence of blood.[13]
The CDC's own per-exposure risk chart classifies biting, spitting, and throwing body fluids as posing "negligible" risk of HIV transmission — the same category as sharing sex toys.[14] Undetectable = Untransmittable (U=U) has been confirmed by multiple large studies: a person on effective HIV treatment with a suppressed viral load cannot sexually transmit HIV to a partner.[13]
None of this is written into Florida law. A person on treatment, undetectable, using condoms, whose partner is on PrEP, can still be prosecuted under § 384.24(2) for not disclosing before sex. A person who spits at a first responder can be charged with "criminal transmission of HIV" under § 775.0877 even though every major public-health authority agrees the conduct cannot transmit the virus. The Williams Institute reviewed every Florida HIV conviction from 1986 through 2017 and found that none required conduct capable of transmitting HIV.[7]
By the Numbers
Researchers at the Williams Institute at UCLA Law spent years analyzing Florida's own criminal justice data. What they found was damning — not just in scale, but in who these laws have been used against.
Who Gets Prosecuted
The law is written to apply to everyone living with HIV. The enforcement has been anything but equal. Analysis of Florida's criminal data from 1986 to 2017 revealed stark racial and gender disparities.
Women made up just 27% of people living with HIV in Florida, but 56% of HIV-related arrests and 51% of the state's HIV-related prison sentences.[5] Of the 205 prison sentences the Williams Institute reviewed, roughly 61% were connected to Florida's HIV sex-work statute, and Black women alone accounted for 44% of those sex-work convictions — more than any other single group. White men accounted for 2%.[5]
Black men were more likely to be arrested and convicted for non-disclosure and exposure offenses than any other group, accounting for 53% of exposure convictions with prison time.[5] Arrests were reported in 47 of Florida's 67 counties, but Miami-Dade and Broward — where the largest share of the state's people living with HIV actually live — had far fewer HIV-related arrests than counties like Duval and Hillsborough.[6] The law is not enforced where the epidemic is. It's enforced where the bias is.
None of the convictions under Florida's primary HIV statute required conduct that could actually transmit HIV. Not one. The Williams Institute's transmission-risk review found that 100% of Florida HIV-crime convictions from 1986–2017 — every single one — required no actual transmission of HIV, no intent to transmit, and no conduct that could actually transmit the virus.[7]
Real Cases, Real People
Statistics can numb you to what's actually happening. These cases are documented in legal and academic records.
A 35-year-old man living with HIV was arrested after an altercation with police. During the arrest, he yelled that he had HIV and bit an officer on the shin, leaving a bruise. He was charged with attempted murder. He was convicted of aggravated battery — with HIV treated as the "deadly weapon." He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, the maximum allowed.[8]
The officer tested HIV-negative. HIV cannot be transmitted through a bite. The prosecutor told jurors the officer had to avoid contact with his wife and children for eight months "for fear he could severely affect them." This was medically false. It didn't matter.
A woman in Florida was convicted under § 384.24(2) after engaging in oral sex without disclosing her HIV status. Oral sex carries a near-zero risk of HIV transmission, particularly when the person with HIV is on treatment. The court upheld her conviction. The law doesn't calibrate to actual risk — only to whether disclosure occurred.
A woman living with HIV was charged with five counts of criminal transmission of HIV after allegedly spitting on paramedics. Spitting carries no meaningful risk of HIV transmission — saliva is not an established route of HIV exposure. She was charged under § 775.0877, the criminal transmission enhancement statute, which applies to people who have previously been convicted of a specified offense and then commit another involving the transfer of bodily fluids. Intent and actual transmission are not required.
A man living with HIV was charged with two counts of criminal transmission of HIV after allegedly spitting at and biting paramedics and police officers. As with the September case, no actual transmission occurred or was possible through these acts. These cases marked the first known application of Florida's criminal transmission statute outside of sex-work contexts — a significant expansion of how the law is being used, documented by the Center for HIV Law and Policy and the HIV Justice Network.[8]
These cases reflect a legal framework that treats a person's HIV status as inherently dangerous regardless of science, regardless of treatment, regardless of context. The law was built on the fear of 1986. It is still running on that fear today — and it is expanding.
The 2022 Expansion: Beyond Sex Work
For most of its history, Florida's criminal-transmission statute (§ 775.0877) was applied almost exclusively in the prosecution of sex workers. That changed in 2022.
In September 2022, a Florida woman living with HIV was charged with five counts of criminal transmission of HIV for allegedly spitting on paramedics. In October 2022, a man living with HIV was charged with two counts of criminal transmission of HIV for allegedly spitting at and biting paramedics and police officers. The HIV Justice Network and the Center for HIV Law and Policy documented both cases and characterized them as the first known applications of § 775.0877 outside sex-work contexts — a meaningful expansion of the statute's reach.[8]
Every major public-health authority — CDC, NIH, WHO, and UNAIDS — agrees that spitting cannot transmit HIV. UNAIDS' 2024 human-rights factsheet counted at least 11 spitting-related and seven biting-related HIV criminal cases reported globally since 2022, despite scientific consensus that neither poses a risk of transmission.[15]
The 2022 Florida cases matter because they show that a criminal law written for one context (sex work) is expandable in the hands of prosecutors to reach anyone living with HIV who has any physical altercation with first responders. It is a statute that criminalizes a person's HIV status itself, unmoored from transmission risk, intent, or actual harm.
How Florida Compares Nationally
Florida is not alone, but it is among the worst offenders. According to the CDC and the Sero Project, 32 states still have HIV-specific criminal laws on the books. UNAIDS reports that 156 countries have criminalized HIV nondisclosure, exposure, or transmission through specific or general laws or have prosecuted people under general laws in the last decade.[15]
Since 2014, seven states have modernized their HIV criminal laws to reflect current science, including reducing penalties for non-disclosure without transmission, adding defenses for viral suppression or condom use, or eliminating HIV-specific statutes entirely. Illinois repealed its HIV-specific criminal transmission law in 2021. Missouri, North Carolina, California, Iowa, Michigan, and Nevada have all narrowed or reformed their statutes. Florida has done none of this.[16]
At the federal level, the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act has been introduced in multiple sessions of Congress. It would encourage states to review their laws and align them with modern science through federal grants and reporting requirements. It has not passed.[16]
By any measure of enforcement, Florida ranks among the top HIV-criminalization jurisdictions in the world. The HIV Justice Network describes the state as "one of the worst hotspots for HIV criminalisation not only in the United States, but globally."[8]
The Fight to Change the Law
Advocates have been pushing to modernize Florida's HIV criminalization statutes for years. The movement has won committee votes, built bipartisan support, and generated significant research backing — and it keeps losing in the legislature.
2019: HB 79, the HIV Prevention Justice Act sponsored by Rep. Nick Duran (D-Miami), advanced through the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee with a 10–3 bipartisan vote — five Republicans and five Democrats. It later cleared the House Appropriations Committee 26–3. It did not reach a floor vote.[9]
2020: HIV modernization bills sponsored by Rep. Duran and Sen. Jason Pizzo would have reduced the non-disclosure penalty from a felony to a misdemeanor. Committee support carried again from the prior session. The bills did not pass either full chamber.[9]
2022: SB 1468, sponsored by Sen. Linda Stewart, would have excluded saliva from the body-fluid definition in § 775.0877, removed sex-work-related HIV testing requirements, and reduced criminal-transmission penalties. It did not advance out of committee.[10]
2026: The HIV Prevention Justice Act (SB 764 / HB 1223) was filed in December 2025 and January 2026. SB 764 is sponsored by Sen. Shevrin Jones; HB 1223 is sponsored by Rep. Young; Equality Florida also lists Sen. Rodriguez as a co-sponsor of the paired package. The bill would reduce criminal penalties for blood and tissue donation by people living with HIV, require substantial risk of transmission and intent for the sexual-transmission offense, and exclude saliva from HIV-testing triggers. SB 764 was referred to Health Policy; Criminal Justice; Fiscal Policy on December 16, 2025. HB 1223 was filed January 8, 2026.[11] Track SB 764 →
Florida's HIV criminalization laws remain unchanged. Every reform bill introduced over the past decade has passed at least one committee — and none has reached a final vote. Florida remains one of the most actively enforced HIV criminalization jurisdictions in the country, and globally.[12]
Who's Been Fighting for Change
Protecting Yourself
The law is what it is right now. While advocates work to change it, here are practical steps that can protect you — and potentially serve as a legal defense if you ever need one.
Under Florida law, you generally have a defense to § 384.24(2) charges if you disclosed your HIV status to your partner before sex and they consented knowing your status. That's the legal protection. Condom use, undetectable viral load, PrEP use by your partner — none of these are statutory defenses in Florida. They may influence a jury or prosecution, but they are not written protections in the law.
A note on U=U and the law: U=U — Undetectable = Untransmittable — is established science. A person who is virally suppressed cannot sexually transmit HIV.[13] But U=U is not currently a legal defense in Florida. You can be prosecuted under Florida law even if you posed zero transmission risk to your partner. This is precisely why advocates argue these laws need to be repealed, not just modernized: the science of transmission should determine criminal liability, but even that framing accepts a premise — that health status can justify prosecution — that the advocacy community increasingly rejects entirely. No one should be prosecuted for a health condition. Period.
- Disclose before sex. It's the only clear legal protection Florida's law offers. It can be awkward. Do it anyway.
- Document your disclosures if possible. A text message or written record of a conversation can matter enormously if you ever face charges. This is not paranoia — it's protection.
- Stay in treatment and maintain an undetectable viral load. U=U (Undetectable = Untransmittable) is established science. It's not yet a legal defense in Florida, but it may influence how prosecutors, judges, and juries view a case — and it protects your partner's health.
- Use condoms. Not a statutory defense, but relevant to demonstrating that you took steps to prevent harm.
- Know your county's enforcement patterns. Duval, Hillsborough, and Pinellas counties have historically accounted for a disproportionate share of Florida's HIV-related arrests relative to their HIV-positive populations.
- If you are a sex worker, the stakes under Florida law are even higher. HIV + sex work carries felony charges in Florida regardless of risk. This is one of the most urgent areas where reform is needed.
- Don't talk to police without an attorney. If you are ever questioned in connection with an HIV-related charge, say nothing until you have legal representation.
A note on testing: Some people avoid HIV testing because they fear that knowing their status could be used against them. This is a real and tragic consequence of criminalization. But staying undiagnosed does not protect you legally — and it prevents you from getting treatment that could save your life. Anonymous testing options exist in Florida for this reason.
If You're Facing a Charge
If you or someone you know has been charged with an HIV-related criminal offense in Florida, the most important thing is this: get legal help immediately. These are serious felony charges. Do not try to navigate them alone.
If you cannot afford an attorney, you have the right to a public defender. Request one immediately. Do not speak with investigators or prosecutors before consulting legal counsel.
National Resources on HIV Criminalization
Florida's fight doesn't happen in isolation. These national organizations are working to end HIV criminalization across the country — through legal advocacy, survivor storytelling, grassroots organizing, and policy reform.
February 28 is National HIV Is Not a Crime Awareness Day — first observed in 2022 by the Sero Project and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation. It's an annual opportunity to amplify survivor voices and push for reform.
Florida's HIV criminalization laws do not make people safer. The research is clear on this. Studies have found no association between HIV criminalization laws and reduced transmission rates. What these laws do is keep people from getting tested. They drive people away from care. They punish people living with HIV for existing, for having sex, for being human.
The communities most impacted — Black women, transgender women, sex workers, people of color — are already the communities facing the greatest barriers to care. Criminalization adds another weapon to a system already working against them.
The 2026 HIV Prevention Justice Act (SB 764 / HB 1223) is the latest attempt to change this. Reform bills have passed committees with bipartisan support — and they keep dying. That won't change until the people most affected are visible and loud in Tallahassee. If you want to add your voice during the 2026 session and beyond, Equality Florida's HIV Advocacy Project and the Florida HIV Justice Coalition are where to start. And the call scripts on the RiseUpToHIV Take Action page have scripts specifically for Florida state legislators.
And if you're living with HIV in Florida right now, navigating this: you deserve better than laws written before effective treatment existed. You deserve a legal framework that reflects what we actually know about this virus. That fight is ongoing. You're not alone in it.
— Kevin Maloney, Founder, RiseUpToHIV · Person living with HIV · Florida · This page provides general information, not legal advice. If you are facing legal charges, please consult a qualified attorney.
References & Sources
Primary statutes, peer-reviewed research, and authoritative public-health, legal, and advocacy sources supporting the claims on this page. Community and advocacy publications are cited for lived-experience context; clinical and epidemiological claims are anchored to primary sources.
- ↩Florida Legislature. Fla. Stat. § 384.24 — Unlawful acts; sexually transmissible diseases. The 2025 Florida Statutes. flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/384.24
- ↩Florida Legislature. Fla. Stat. § 775.0877 — Criminal transmission of HIV; procedures; penalties. The 2025 Florida Statutes. flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/775.0877
- ↩Florida Legislature. Fla. Stat. § 381.0041 — Donation and transfer of human tissue; testing requirements. The 2025 Florida Statutes. flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/381.0041
- ↩Florida Legislature. Fla. Stat. § 796.08 — Screening for HIV and STDs; prostitution and lewdness. The 2025 Florida Statutes. flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2025/796.08
- ↩Hasenbush, A., Sears, B., & Miyashita Ochoa, A. HIV Criminalization in Florida: Length of Incarceration and Fiscal Implications. Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law (Jul. 2021, updated 2022). williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu
- ↩Hasenbush, A. HIV Criminalization In Florida: Penal Implications For People Living With HIV/AIDS. Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law (Oct. 2018). williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu
- ↩Williams Institute. HIV Criminalization in Florida: Evaluation of Transmission Risk. UCLA School of Law (Aug. 2022). williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/hiv-crim-transmission-fl
- ↩HIV Justice Network. Florida country profile — HIV criminalisation cases and legal framework. Includes the 2009 bite prosecution, September 2022 spitting-on-paramedics case, and October 2022 spitting/biting case. hivjustice.net/country/us/us-fl
- ↩Equality Florida. Florida HIV Modernization Bill Clears First Committee Hurdle. Coverage of HB 79 passing the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee 10–3 (Feb. 22, 2019); Florida House staff analysis of CS/HB 79 (2019). eqfl.org/news/HB79 · flsenate.gov HB 79 analysis
- ↩Florida Senate. SB 1468 (2022) — Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Sponsor: Sen. Stewart. Text and history. flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2022/1468
- ↩Florida Senate. SB 764 (2026) — HIV Prevention Justice Act (Sen. Jones); HB 1223 (2026) (Rep. Young). Equality Florida 2026 Legislative Slate also lists Sen. Rodriguez as a paired-package supporter. SB 764 · HB 1223 · eqfl.org/2026-legislative-slate
- ↩Center for HIV Law and Policy. Florida state profile. hivlawandpolicy.org/state-profiles/florida
- ↩Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. How HIV Spreads (2024). CDC states there is no chance of transmission through spitting and HIV is not transmitted through saliva. National Institutes of Health, HIVinfo. Understanding How HIV is Transmitted (Sep. 2025). Confirms U=U and lists saliva and insect bites as non-transmission routes. Deshpande AK, et al. A systematic review of risk of HIV transmission through biting or spitting. HIV Medicine (2018). cdc.gov/hiv/causes · hivinfo.nih.gov · PMC6120498
- ↩Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HIV Risk and Prevention Estimates. Per-exposure risk chart classifying biting, spitting, and throwing body fluids as "negligible." cdc.gov/hivpartners/php/riskandprevention
- ↩UNAIDS. HIV criminalization — Human rights fact sheet series 2024. Documents 156 countries with HIV-related criminalization and the 11 spitting- / 7 biting-related cases reported globally since 2022. unaids.org (PDF)
- ↩Center for HIV Law and Policy. HIV Criminalization in the United States: A Sourcebook on State and Federal HIV Criminal Law and Practice. Includes state-by-state modernization progress and the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act. Sero Project. Florida HIV Justice Coalition Basic Fact Sheet. Confirms 32-state figure. CHLP Sourcebook (PDF) · Sero Project (PDF)