On June 25, 2026, the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles published notice of a rulemaking workshop on Chapter 15A-6 of the Florida Administrative Code. That is the chapter that governs administrative suspension review hearings, which is the proceeding where a driver either saves a license after a DUI arrest or does not. The workshop was held on July 10, 2026 in Tallahassee.
Nothing has changed yet, and it is worth being precise about that. A workshop is the earliest step in Florida rulemaking. It comes before a proposed rule is published, which itself comes before adoption. As of this writing no proposed rule has appeared for this chapter. What the notice tells us is that the Department intends to amend the chapter and the materials incorporated into it, which includes the forms.
What Chapter 15A-6 actually controls
If you have never had to use these rules, the chapter title sounds like housekeeping. It is not. Chapter 15A-6 sets the machinery for the only hearing that stands between an arrest and a suspension that runs for six months, a year, or eighteen months. The notice lists the whole chapter, eighteen rules in all:
- Purpose, definitions, filing, and computation of time
- Notice of suspension or disqualification, and the request for review
- Appearances, recusal, and the location of hearings
- Motions, notice of hearing and the prehearing order, and subpoenas
- Formal review, introduction of evidence, and the order
- Preservation of testimony, failure to appear, and informal review
- Judicial review, and the forms
Read that list again with a case in mind. Computation of time decides whether a request filed on day eleven was late. Subpoenas decide whether the officer has to appear. Failure to appear decides what happens when the officer does not. Introduction of evidence decides what the hearing officer may consider. These are not administrative trivia. They are the rules that decide real hearings, and several of them are where cases are actually won.
Most of these rules are old
Here is the part that makes a rewrite unsurprising. Most of Chapter 15A-6 took effect on March 11, 2007. Some of it is considerably older than that. The definitions rule and the computation of time rule date to October 1991. The filing rule, the appearances rule, the recusal rule, and the motions rule date to January 1996. The purpose rule dates to July 1997. Only one rule in the chapter, the one on the location of hearings, has been touched in the last decade, and that was 2013.
So the rules governing these hearings were written for a world before hearings were routinely conducted by telephone, before the volume of electronic breath test records that agencies now generate, and before a good deal of the case law that circuit courts have handed down since. Whatever one thinks of the direction the Department takes, the chapter was due for a look.
What I will be watching for
A few rules matter more than others to the defense side, and they are the ones worth reading closely whenever a proposed version appears:
- Computation of time and filing. The ten day window is unforgiving, and how it is counted, along with what counts as filed and when, is the difference between a hearing and no hearing.
- Subpoenas and failure to appear. The ability to compel the officer, and the consequence when the officer does not come, is the practical core of a formal review.
- Introduction of evidence. What the hearing officer may consider, and over what objection, shapes every argument made in that room.
- The forms. The notice says materials incorporated by reference are in scope. The forms are where the Department’s practice actually lives, and a form change can do more day to day work than a rule change.
If your case is pending right now
Nothing about this changes your deadline. The current rules are the rules, the ten day window still runs from your arrest or the date your notice was issued, whichever is later, and a workshop in Tallahassee does not pause it. If you are counting days, the license deadline checker will show you the exact date your permit expires and what each path costs you. If you want the longer explanation of the hearing itself, that is on the formal review hearing page.
Following it yourself
All of this is public. The workshop notice is number 31051948 in the Florida Administrative Register, published in Volume 52, Number 123. The chapter and every notice filed against it can be tracked on the Florida Administrative Code website, and the notice lists the Bureau of Administrative Reviews as the contact for the agenda. When a proposed rule is published there will be a comment period, and comments from people who actually appear at these hearings tend to be the useful ones.
I will post again when a proposed rule appears, with a plain reading of what changed.
