Florida DUI Laws

Florida DUI law has two license tracks that start at different times and answer different questions. The DHSMV administrative license suspension under §322.2615 starts at arrest-stage notice when a driver has a 0.08-or-higher test result or refuses testing. The officer takes the license, issues a notice of suspension, and gives a 10-day temporary permit if the driver is otherwise eligible. Within 10 days after the notice is issued, the driver may request formal or informal review, or in a first-time ALS situation may seek the restricted-driving review-waiver path under §322.271(7). A review request does not automatically stay the suspension. The temporary permit expires at midnight of the 10th day. If the suspension is sustained, the hard-suspension period before business- or employment-purpose eligibility is generally 30 days after the last temporary permit for a 0.08-or-higher failure and 90 days for refusal. The court-track license action is separate. §322.28 controls the revocation after conviction, and the penalty table encodes that track because the table is about conviction penalties. A first DUI court revocation is 180 days to 1 year. A second conviction within 5 years after a prior conviction is revoked for at least 5 years. A third conviction within 10 years after a prior conviction is revoked for at least 10 years. A fourth DUI, or any DUI Manslaughter conviction, triggers permanent revocation. Serious bodily injury DUI has a separate minimum 3-year revocation. These court revocations can coexist with the earlier DHSMV suspension; they are not one combined min-max range. Florida also keeps the administrative case and the criminal case separated. §316.193(10) and §322.2615(14) say DHSMV rulings under the ALS statute are not considered in the DUI trial, and statements or evidence from the administrative review are not used in the criminal case unless disclosed through criminal discovery. A not-guilty verdict invalidates a 0.08-or-higher ALS under §322.2615(16), but §322.2615(14)(b) says a related criminal disposition does not affect a refusal suspension. That asymmetry matters: winning the DUI trial does not automatically erase every license consequence if the suspension was based on refusal. Refusal is unusually important in Florida because it is not only administrative. Under §316.1932, refusal can be used as evidence in a criminal proceeding. Under §322.2615, refusal can produce a 1-year first-refusal suspension or 18-month prior-refusal suspension. Under §316.1939, breath or urine refusal can become a separate misdemeanor charge if the officer had probable cause, the driver was lawfully arrested for DUI, the required warnings were given, and the driver refused after being warned. The 2025 statute says first refusal is a second-degree misdemeanor and second or subsequent refusal is a first-degree misdemeanor. That is not a felony ladder. It is also not the same thing as the ALS: the statute itself says the administrative proceeding and the criminal refusal action do not control each other. DUI Manslaughter should not be read as simply a worse version of the ordinary DUI tier. §316.193(3)(c)3 names DUI Manslaughter and gives it felony-degree variants. The default is a second-degree felony. It becomes a first-degree felony if the person knew or should have known the crash occurred and failed to give information and render aid, and it also becomes a first-degree felony when the person has a prior covered DUI-manslaughter, BUI-manslaughter, vehicular-homicide, or vessel-homicide conviction. A DUI Manslaughter conviction carries a 4-year mandatory minimum and permanent court revocation. The structured table therefore leaves homicide punishment out of the ordinary first/second/third grid and uses the aggravator, FAQ, and this narrative to front-load the distinct-offense status. Florida blocks a disposition many readers ask about: withheld adjudication. §948.01 is Florida general law allowing probation with or without adjudication in many criminal cases. §316.656 overrides that general framework for DUI. It says no court may suspend, defer, or withhold adjudication of guilt or imposition of sentence for any §316.193 violation, for manslaughter resulting from motor-vehicle operation, or for vehicular homicide. The same statute restricts lesser pleas in high-BAC and crash-result cases. So a Florida DUI is not like states where a first offender may receive a court-supervision or non-conviction DUI disposition under the statewide DUI statute. Restricted driving in Florida has several paths and the names matter. A business-purposes-only privilege under §322.271(1)(c) covers driving necessary to maintain livelihood, including work, on-the-job driving, education, church, and medical purposes. An employment-purposes-only privilege is narrower: driving to and from work and necessary on-the-job driving. After a DUI court revocation of 5 years or less under §322.28(2)(a), a person may petition after 12 months; after a revocation of more than 5 years under that paragraph, the petition point is 24 months. The driver must satisfy conditions including no driving and drug-free time, DUI program supervision, and restricted-purpose limits. Permanent-revocation drivers have separate petition paths under §322.271(4)-(5) after 5 years, but those paths are discretionary, condition-heavy, and not automatic reinstatement. IID rules are also split between the court-order statute and the department issuance statute. §316.193 and §316.1937 let the court impose IID and require it in specific DUI sentencing circumstances. §322.2715 requires IID before a permanent or restricted license issues for listed DUI conviction categories. First offense is modal: no categorical IID for the ordinary first offense, but BAC 0.15 or higher or a passenger under 18 requires at least 6 months, and the court may order at least 6 months for a 0.08-or-higher first offense. Second offense requires at least 1 year, with 2 years for high-BAC or minor-passenger second offenses. Third offenses require at least 2 years. Fourth or subsequent requires at least 5 years. Medical-waiver language does not erase the duty; it can delay restricted licensing or limit reinstatement to employment-purpose-only until the IID period expires. The employer-owned-vehicle exception in §316.1937 is vehicle-use relief in the course and scope of employment, not an offender-level exception to the IID requirement. Commercial drivers face another layer. §322.62 says a person with any alcohol in the body may not drive or be in actual physical control of a commercial motor vehicle, and a 0.04-or-more blood or breath alcohol level triggers §322.61 disqualification consequences. §322.61 imposes 1-year CDL disqualification for listed first major offenses, 3 years when hazardous materials are involved, and permanent disqualification for two listed major offenses in separate incidents. §322.64 creates an administrative commercial disqualification process and says the temporary permit is for noncommercial vehicles only. A BPO or EPO privilege under §322.271 does not authorize commercial motor vehicle operation. Vehicle impoundment or immobilization is another consequence that can be easy to misread. It is not a driver-license revocation and it is not IID. For a first conviction, §316.193(6)(a) requires 10 days of impoundment or immobilization as a probation condition, unless a statutory dismissal exception applies. A second conviction within 5 years carries 30 days for all vehicles owned by the defendant. A third or subsequent conviction within 10 years carries 90 days. The order must not run concurrently with incarceration, and for the second- and third-window subcases it must occur concurrently with the driver-license revocation. The statute also lists dismissal paths for stolen vehicles, certain innocent owners, families with no other transportation, employee-operated business vehicles, and vehicles where certified IID has been installed. That is why the penalty tier notes describe impoundment separately instead of treating it as part of licenseAction or IID duration. Driving while the DUI suspension or revocation is in effect can create a new offense surface. §322.34 separates unknowingly driving while canceled, suspended, or revoked from knowingly doing so, and it escalates a third or subsequent knowing offense to a third-degree felony when the current or most recent prior suspension or revocation was related to DUI, refusal, a traffic offense causing death or serious bodily injury, or fleeing and eluding. §322.34 also permits seizure and forfeiture of a motor vehicle driven in violation of §316.193 when the person was already suspended, revoked, canceled, or in equivalent status because of a prior DUI conviction. This page does not fold those downstream offenses into the ordinary DUI penalty table, but a reader should understand that continuing to drive during the license case can make the situation materially worse. The high-BAC and minor-passenger enhancements are phrased carefully because they are not a separate per-se charge tier. §316.193(4) says a person convicted of §316.193(1) with a blood or breath alcohol level of 0.15 or higher, or accompanied by a person under the age of 18 years, gets higher fine and jail ceilings and mandatory IID. The threshold is 0.15 or higher, not above 0.15. The passenger trigger is under 18, not simply a child in the everyday sense. Those qualifiers appear in the aggravator descriptions, FAQ, and IID trigger because dropping them would change who the statute reaches. Under-21 cases also need separation from ordinary DUI. §322.2616 says a person under 21 with a blood or breath alcohol level of 0.02 or higher may be administratively suspended, but the same statute says the violation is neither a traffic infraction nor a criminal offense, and that it does not bar prosecution under §316.193. A younger driver at 0.02 but below 0.08 may be in the administrative under-21 track; a younger driver at 0.08 or with impairment evidence may also face the adult DUI framework. If the under-21 reading is 0.05 or higher, the suspension remains in effect until the driver completes a substance-abuse course offered by a licensed DUI program. Finally, serious-injury and death cases have a separate blood-testing statute. §316.1933 applies when an officer has probable cause to believe a motor vehicle driven or controlled by an impaired person caused death or serious bodily injury. The officer shall require a blood test, may use reasonable force if necessary, and the test need not be incidental to a lawful arrest. Serious bodily injury means a condition creating a substantial risk of death, serious personal disfigurement, or protracted loss or impairment of a bodily member or organ. Ordinary implied-consent blood testing under §316.1932, serious-injury compulsory testing under §316.1933, and constitutional limits for unconscious-driver blood draws are related but not identical. McGraw applies the Mitchell exigency framework rather than treating implied consent alone as a universal answer.