Florida official demands outlets delete document

The Florida Senate in Tallahassee ordered the South Florida Sun Sentinel and the Orlando Sentinel to destroy an insurance report obtained through a public records request, warning in a Sept. 15, 2026, letter that refusing to do so could lead to “civil or criminal legal implications.”

The report, which the Senate inadvertently sent to the newspapers as an email attachment, revealed that 20 Florida property insurers paid fees to corporate affiliates that exceeded the state’s legal standard of “fair and reasonable.”

In a letter to Sun Sentinel reporter David Fleshler, Senate General Counsel Tom Thomas said the chamber had inadvertently released the record containing “sensitive, proprietary, trade secrets,” the newspaper reported. Thomas wrote that any further use of the records would constitute a third-degree felony under Florida law.

The reporters initially obtained the unredacted report through a broad public records request for legislative emails. Later, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation provided the news organizations with a heavily redacted version in response to a specific request for the report.

The reporters challenged the legality of the redactions and told the office that they had already obtained an unredacted copy. The next day, the Senate emailed Fleshler, the requesting journalist, a “mandatory demand for compliance.”

Thomas’ email, published by the Orlando Sentinel, ordered the newspapers to stop reviewing, copying or distributing the records, and to permanently delete all electronic copies and destroy any printed copies.

Thomas conceded that the Senate had released the report as part of an “extremely large response” to a public records request, but attributed the disclosure to an “inadvertent administrative oversight.”

He directed the Sun Sentinel to notify anyone else who had received the records and instruct them to destroy their copies. It gave the newspaper 48 hours to acknowledge the notice and certify that the records had been destroyed.

Both newspapers declined.

“We obtained these records legally and appropriately through the state’s public records process,” Gretchen Day-Bryant, executive editor of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, and Roger Simmons, executive editor of the Orlando Sentinel, said in a joint statement published by the news outlets.

“The First Amendment guarantees our right to publish these findings, and we will not allow the Florida Senate’s threats to prevent us from reporting,” the statement added.

The editors said the information was important to Florida homeowners because insurance costs affect their household finances.

Barbara Petersen, president and CEO of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, told the news outlets the Senate could not compel them to destroy information it had released, even if the disclosure was accidental.

“It is an attempt to chill and intimidate,” Petersen said.