Florida generates more calls to our office than any other state. Club directors, league presidents and sanctioning body administrators have been asking the same question since last spring, which is whether this actually applies to them and what they are supposed to do about it.
The deadline has now passed. Florida Statute 943.0438 took effect July 1, 2026, and it requires private, nongovernmental entities that organize, operate or coordinate youth athletic teams to run a Level 2 background screening on every current and prospective athletic coach. Level 2 is not a database search. It is fingerprint-based, it goes to FDLE and the FBI, and it is the same class of screening Florida uses for people who work in child care and health care.
If you followed this story last year, it is worth reading again anyway, because the Legislature amended the statute in the 2026 session. CS/CS/HB 1069 became Chapter 2026-114, was approved by the Governor on May 22, 2026, and took effect the same day the screening requirement did. It added a definition, a narrow exemption, and a records-access condition that a lot of organizations have not caught up to.
We should also say plainly what we say on every one of these calls. We are a company that focusses on screening with public records and proprietary criminal database searches, and this law requires something we do not sell. We are writing it up because Florida organizations keep asking, and because the wrong answer here has real consequences.
How it got here
The requirement was originally set to take effect January 1, 2025. SB 1546, which became Chapter 2025-97 when the Governor signed it on May 28, 2025, pushed the compliance date out to July 1, 2026 and gave organizations an additional eighteen months. Then HB 1069, Chapter 2026-114, approved May 22, 2026, refined the definitions, created a limited exemption, and tied the requirement to Florida’s centralized screening Clearinghouse.
If your compliance plan was built off the 2025 version of the statute, it is out of date in at least three places.
Who has to comply
The statute uses the term Independent Sanctioning Authority, meaning a private, nongovernmental entity that organizes, operates or coordinates a youth athletic team in Florida, where the team includes at least one minor and is not affiliated with a private school.
City and county recreation departments are governmental, so the statute is aimed past them. Private clubs, travel organizations, sanctioning bodies and independent leagues are squarely in scope. If you are a parks department that charters or contracts with private clubs on your fields, your partners are covered even if you are not, and you should be asking them for proof.
New in 2026: the statute now defines a “team based in this state” as a group of players assembled in Florida to form one side in a competitive game or sport, which primarily practices and competes in Florida. That definition did not exist before. If you run travel or multi-state programming, this is the language your counsel needs to look at, because it draws the line around which of your teams the statute reaches.
Who counts as a coach
Broader than most people guess. An athletic coach is a person authorized by the sanctioning authority to work as a coach, assistant coach, manager or referee, whether for compensation or as a volunteer, for a youth athletic team based in Florida, and who has direct contact with one or more minors on the team.
So: head coaches, assistants, team managers and officials. Paid or unpaid makes no difference. The volunteer dad who runs the outfield drills is covered on the same terms as the paid director of coaching.
What a Level 2 screening includes
Under F.S. § 435.04, the person is fingerprinted and those prints go to:
- The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, for a statewide criminal history check
- The FBI, for a national criminal history check
- Local law enforcement, for a local records check
It also includes a search of the sexual predator and sexual offender registries of every state where the person lived during the previous five years.
What disqualifies someone
This is stricter than most organizational policies, and it catches people at stages earlier than conviction. A Level 2 screening disqualifies anyone who:
- Has been arrested for and is awaiting final disposition of one of the offenses listed at § 435.04(2)
- Has been found guilty of one of those offenses, regardless of adjudication
- Entered a plea of nolo contendere or guilty to one of them
- Was adjudicated delinquent for one of them, where the record has not been sealed or expunged
The statute separately disqualifies anyone in the same posture on any offense meeting the definition of domestic violence at § 741.28, whether the act occurred in Florida or elsewhere.
There is an exemption process at § 435.07. A sanctioning authority may allow a disqualified person to coach if that person has successfully completed it. Exemptions cannot be granted to sexual predators under § 775.21 or career offenders under § 775.261, and cannot be granted to sexual offenders unless the person was removed under § 943.0435.
Four provisions people are missing
You cannot push this down to the teams. The sanctioning authority may not delegate responsibility for conducting background screenings to an individual team. If you are a sanctioning body with member clubs, the compliance obligation sits with you. Telling clubs to handle their own screening does not satisfy the law.
You cannot let someone start and screen them later. The authority may not authorize any person to act as an athletic coach unless a Level 2 screening has been conducted and did not result in disqualification. Screening is a gate, not a formality you catch up on in week three.
There is one narrow exception to that gate, and it is narrower than the rumor. Chapter 2026-114 lets a sanctioning authority exempt a person under 18 years of age, or a referee who was disqualified, from the Level 2 requirement. That only works if the person passes a Level 1 screening under § 435.03 that includes a search against the state and federal sexual predator and sexual offender registries, and works under the direct supervision of an athletic coach who does meet the Level 2 requirements. Earlier drafts of this provision were broader, and some of the coverage from 2025 described a general “supervised person” exemption. The enacted version covers those two categories and nothing else. Do not build your season around a wider reading of it.
Documentation is a five-year obligation. You must maintain, for at least five years, the screening results for each person screened and the written notice of disqualification provided to anyone who did not pass. Disqualified individuals must receive that written notice within seven business days of the screening.
The Clearinghouse condition tied to SafeSport
The 2026 amendments to § 943.0542 added a condition that has not gotten much attention.
Effective January 1, 2026, or a later date set by the Agency for Health Care Administration, the Care Provider Background Screening Clearinghouse may release state criminal history records to a qualified entity only in two situations: where the person challenges the record, or where the qualified entity is an independent sanctioning authority that is compliant with the federal Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act of 2017.
What that means in practice is that your access to the records you are legally required to obtain now depends on your compliance with the federal SafeSport Act, which requires prompt reporting of suspected abuse, procedures limiting one-on-one adult-minor interactions, and abuse prevention training. Organizations that have treated SafeSport compliance as a paperwork exercise should revisit it.
The same act requires qualified entities to designate a user administrator as the primary point of contact responsible for managing compliance with the security and privacy rules around criminal history information, and allows that person to designate additional authorized users. FDLE audits qualified entities periodically. Somebody at your organization owns this by name now.
There is also a change worth knowing about on the applicant side. Individuals screened through the Clearinghouse by a qualified entity may not lawfully deny or fail to acknowledge arrests covered by a sealed or expunged record, and FDLE will disclose the existence of those records to the screening entity. You will see things ordinary employers do not.
The part that works in your favor
Compliance is not purely a cost. Section 943.0438 provides that in a civil action for death, injury or damage to a third person caused by an athletic coach’s intentional tort relating to alleged sexual misconduct, there is a rebuttable presumption that the sanctioning authority was not negligent in authorizing that coach, provided the authority complied with the screening and disqualification requirements beforehand.
That presumption is worth real money in a lawsuit, and it is only available to an organization that can document what it did. Keep the file.
How the process actually runs
Fingerprints go through FDLE’s VECHS program, Florida’s implementation of the federal Volunteer and Employee Criminal History System authorized by the National Child Protection Act of 1993. Independent sanctioning authorities must participate in VECHS under § 943.0542.
As of July 1, 2026, an independent sanctioning authority is deemed a qualified entity for purposes of participating in the Care Provider Background Screening Clearinghouse, administered by the Agency for Health Care Administration. The Clearinghouse is built so that a person screened once can have that result shared across participating agencies rather than being reprinted for every organization, which over time should reduce cost and turnaround for coaches who work with more than one program.
In practice, that means you register as a qualified entity, name your user administrator, set up a relationship with a Livescan provider, and build the fingerprint appointment into onboarding rather than bolting it on at the end.
On cost and timing, reported figures vary by vendor and county. Livescan fees for Florida coach screening have been reported in the range of roughly $50 to $80 per person in 2026, with some sheriff’s offices quoting $60 to $105. FDLE-side turnaround is often quick, reported at around 24 to 72 hours, but do not plan against the fastest case. Get your own quotes and confirm current pricing with your provider.
What to do now that the deadline has passed
Audit against the current statute, not last year’s summary. The definition of a covered team changed, the exemption changed, and the records-access condition is new.
Inventory who is covered. Build the actual list of head coaches, assistants, managers, referees and anyone else with direct contact. You will find people on it you had not thought of.
Confirm where you stand on the SafeSport Act. Your reporting procedures, your limits on one-on-one interaction and your training are now tied to your ability to get records out of the Clearinghouse.
Name your user administrator in writing. The statute contemplates a specific person. Do not leave it implied.
Keep the records for five years. Document who was screened, when, what the result was, and what notice went to anyone you disqualified. This is the file that supports the rebuttable presumption if you ever need it.
Say something to your families. Programs that quietly comply get no credit for it. Nearly nine in ten youth sports parents say their child’s coach should pass a criminal background check, according to Aspen Institute Project Play survey data. A short note explaining that every coach in your program has cleared a fingerprint-based state and federal screening is worth writing.
If you are outside Florida
Do not file this away as a Florida story. Thirteen states now have youth sports screening statutes on the books, South Carolina and New Jersey both saw bills introduced in 2026, and Colorado considered an expansion of its existing law. Florida is the strictest version so far, and it has now been amended twice in two years. It will not be the last one.
If you want to know what your own state currently requires, we keep a state-by-state breakdown here.
Coach Background provides national criminal database screening for coaches, referees, employees and volunteers, with identity verified against a government issued photo ID. Where a state requires fingerprint-based screening, as Florida now does for private youth athletic organizations, that requirement has to be met through the state’s system. Where it does not, we can have you screening in days. Request a quote or call 888-551-4855.
This post summarizes a statute for general information. It is not legal advice. Have your counsel review F.S. § 943.0438, § 435.03, § 435.04, § 435.07, § 435.12 and § 943.0542, as amended by Chapter 2026-114, Laws of Florida, against your organization’s structure before you rely on any of it.
Sources: Chapter 2026-114, Laws of Florida (CS/CS/HB 1069, approved May 22, 2026); Chapter 2025-97, Laws of Florida (CS/CS/SB 1546, approved May 28, 2025); Florida Senate Bill Analysis, CS/CS/SB 1546; Florida House Bill Analysis, CS/CS/HB 1069; F.S. § 943.0438, § 943.0542, § 435.03, § 435.04, § 435.07; Little League Child Protection Program, State Laws on Background Checks for Local Leagues; Aspen Institute Project Play, State of Play 2025.