Florida Settles COVID-19 Public Records Lawsuit, Will Provide Weekly Updates Again

Florida’s COVID dashboard will start providing weekly statistics on cases, deaths and vaccinations for the next three years.

A woman receives a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at the UHealth's pediatric mobile clinic in Miami, Fla., on May 17, 2021. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

A two-year legal battle against Florida came to an end on Monday, with the state’s public health agency agreeing to once again post weekly COVID-19 updates in order to settle the case.

The case stemmed from the state’s decision to no longer update its health department’s COVID-19 dashboard that tracked the number of infections and deaths on a daily basis. Starting from June 2021, the dashboard only provided weekly reports, with condensed information that only focused on Florida residents.

Those reports, now released every two weeks, have also become more vaccine-focused. They now prominently feature a series of “vaccination impact” graphics, which align the weekly numbers of COVID cases and the overall numbers of people of certain ages who received the jabs side by side. They also show a breakdown by county of what percentage of people 6 and older are vaccinated and the new case positivity rates for each county.

Former state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democrat representing a part of eastern Orlando, sued the health department in August 2021, after the agency insisted on releasing COVID reports in the new format that no longer included “daily pediatric case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths.”

“Floridians have an immediate need for access to information about the virus and its impact on and spread in particular communities. This information is vital to the ability of citizens to understand the risks and make informed decisions about their lives,” Mr. Smith wrote in the 467-page complaint. He was joined by the Florida Center for Government Accountability (FLCGA), a Sarasota-based nonprofit advocacy group.

Specifically, Mr. Smith and FLCGA accused Florida of violating the Sunshine State’s public records law as well as its own constitution, which guarantees a right for all citizens to “inspect or copy any public record” with some exemptions.

As a part of Monday’s settlement, the Florida Department of Health will start posting more COVID-19 information later this month. It is mandated that, for the next three years, the COVID dashboard provides weekly statistics on cases, deaths, and vaccinations by county, age group, gender, and race.

The state has also agreed to pay more than $152,000 in legal fees.

Neither the the Florida Department of Health, nor Florida Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo admits any wrongdoing.

“The DeSantis administration settled in our favor [because] they knew what they did was wrong,” Mr. Smith wrote on X. “We held them accountable, required them to be more transparent and to hand over records they claimed didn’t exist, and protected the public’s constitutional right to know.”

The Department of Health criticized Smith and the FLCGA in an email, calling the lawsuit a waste of public resources.

“It is unfortunate that we have continued to waste government resources arguing over the formatting of data with armchair epidemiologists who have zero training or expertise,” Jae Williams, a spokesperson for the department, said in a statement.

He also noted that the agency has always made COVID data available through “historical Department reports, and the Department has always reported data to the [U.S.] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

“The Department has decided to display data like other diseases that are surveilled (ranging from influenza to stroke to diabetes),” Mr. Williams said. “COVID-19 data will shift from the previously published Biweekly Reports and now solely be available on Florida CHARTS alongside all other public health data.”

Mr. Smith’s lawsuit initially named the Florida Department of Health and Florida Surgeon General Dr. Scott Rivkees as defendants. Dr. Rivkees, who was removed from a press briefing after telling Floridians that they might have to keep social distancing for up to a year, announced his resignation in late August 2021, a few days before the suit was filed.