At this year’s legislative conference, the James Madison Institute (JMI) defended several issues addressing tax cuts to improve school choices.
Their latest “2025 Legislation Summary” focuses on several key issues that have not attracted media attention.
Technology and Innovation Centre
It is labelled digital security and innovation by highlighting the flaws of the law that requires AI-generated content. This mission would have created important technical and compliance challenges for smaller Florida businesses, while protecting more well-established businesses.
He defended consumer data privacy by educating lawmakers about the dangers of the “Right to Repair” Act. Specifically, the law would create potential security breaches, including medical records or banking information, through access to internal components of individual digital devices, without adequate protection.
We preserved constitutional freedom by highlighting the initial amendment violations related to the app requesting users to age. This protected all Floridians from creating new data breaches targets, supporting market-based solutions such as age-appropriate design capabilities and parental controls that respect user privacy.
A key cryptographic technology protected by outlines the risks of creating backdoors with “end-to-end” encrypted messaging services. This prevented the creation of intentional vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious hackers, similar to the cause of the December 2024 “salt timp” attack on American telecommunications infrastructure.
Advanced digital infrastructure development by supporting the Utility Transfer Refund Grant Program within the Department of Commerce. The program allocates $50 million per year from existing telecommunications services tax revenues and funds the costs of relocating utilities previously handed over to consumers. This represents a paradigm shift in using revenue from communication services taxes to actually fund communication services, rather than diverting the dollar into general revenue. In doing so, we are helping to create a sustainable framework to maintain and expand Florida’s critical communications networks.
The country’s highest percentage of 890,000 contractors have identified future priorities for supporting Florida’s growing independent workforce. Future laws should include “portable profit” solutions that allow businesses to voluntarily contribute to profit programs without causing employee classification, and reasonable cybersecurity liability protections that use industry-standard security practices to protect businesses when hacked.
Marshall Education Freedom Center
It helped FL (and MO) advance in “sports choice.” Senator Corey Simon supported a successful effort to expand the “sports choice” option for students in private schools who want to play sports that have no teams in the school. Simon’s measure is based on Florida’s highly-known “Tim Tebou’s Law” (giving opportunities for homeschooled students’ sports teams). Shortly after the new Florida law was passed, Missouri adopted a similar bill. (JMI was in regular contact with Missouri supporters and shared insights and encouragement.)
It helped address the needs of the learning space of new education companies. We supported the proposal to provide a “first dib” to charter schools by claiming abandoned school buildings that can be used for educational purposes. And it attracted great interest (via OP-ED and legislative testimony) to enable our schools and new “microschool” companies to use the spaces in unused school buildings.
We have reinstated efforts to cap, limit and overregulate the K-12 scholarship program. We helped convince lawmakers that the No. 1 ranking in educational freedom in FL could be at risk if the proposed enrollment cap for the scholarship program was adopted. He also persuaded them to remove the troubling new document requirements for scholarship parents (via OP-ED and digital advertising), helping them avoid new restrictions on how their families could use their personalized educational scholarship. Furthermore, we led a successful effort to “keep homes in home education mentoring programs” (after the introduction of a proposal to ban home-based “Edu-Preneurs”).
He supported efforts to adopt new federal education policies that are friendly to parents. We have urged the federal government to allow “Take Children” Title I in states like Florida (via weighted scholarships for people living in communities that need revitalization). He also worked with supporters of the Federal Schools’ Selected Tax Credit Program (which found his way into President Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill”).
