Florida Said Collection Emails Are Fine After 9 p.m. Federal Law Did Not.
The short answer
A 2025 Florida law added one sentence to the state's debt collection statute, exempting email from the prohibition on communicating with a debtor between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. That is a real change and it eliminates a real category of state-law claims. It does not make after-hours collection emails lawful. For any business that is a debt collector under federal law, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Regulation F still treats an email sent at 11 p.m. as sent at an inconvenient time, and federal law is a floor that state law cannot lower.
Why it comes up
Collection communication has moved to email and text, and the statutes were written for telephone calls. Courts then had to decide when an email "communicates" with someone: when it is sent, or when it is read. Those two answers produce completely different compliance regimes, because a collector controls when it sends and does not control when anyone reads.
Florida's legislature answered the question by removing email from the timing rule entirely. The federal regulator had already answered it the other way.
What Florida did
CS/CS/SB 232 (2025), titled Debt Collection, was sponsored by Senator Ana Maria Rodriguez with committee substitutes from Banking and Insurance and from Commerce and Tourism. The House companion, CS/CS/HB 147, was sponsored by Representative Peggy Gossett-Seidman and was laid on the table in favor of the Senate bill. The Senate passed it 36 to 0 on April 16, 2025 and the House 116 to 0 on April 29, 2025. It was approved by the Governor on May 16, 2025 as Chapter 2025-23, Laws of Florida, and it took effect upon becoming law, which is to say May 16, 2025.
One point of care. The committee analyses of earlier versions state a July 1, 2025 effective date. The enrolled bill changed it. The operative date is May 16, 2025.
What the amendment actually did was add a single sentence to Fla. Stat. 559.72(17). The subsection now reads, in relevant part, that in collecting consumer debts a person may not communicate with the debtor between the hours of 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. in the debtor's time zone without the prior consent of the debtor, and that "This subsection does not apply to an e-mail communication that is sent to an e-mail address and that otherwise complies with this section."
The time-zone presumptions in paragraphs (a) and (b), which are written entirely around telephone calls, are unchanged.
The drafting history is worth one line, because it shows the choice that was made. Earlier versions of the bill would have narrowed the prohibition to telephone calls. The enrolled version abandoned that and instead left the general prohibition on communication intact while carving out a defined class of email. What passed is an email-specific exception, not a telephone-only rule.
Our take: three things this does not do
One. It does not exempt text messages. The carve-out reaches only an email communication "sent to an e-mail address." A text message is not sent to an email address. The general prohibition on communicating with the debtor between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m. continues to cover SMS. Nothing in Chapter 2025-23 changes that, and a business that reads the amendment as a general electronic-communications exemption has misread it.
The statute does not define "e-mail address," which leaves at least one genuine open question: an email sent to a carrier gateway address that arrives on the recipient's phone as a text is literally sent to an email address. No Florida court appears to have construed the new sentence.
Two. It does not exempt the email from the rest of the statute. The carve-out applies only to an email "that otherwise complies with this section." Every other prohibition in Section 559.72 still applies to that email. If it is harassing in frequency, abusive in language, asserts a right the sender knows does not exist, simulates legal process, or goes to a debtor known to be represented by counsel, it remains actionable. The 9 p.m. clock is simply no longer an independent hook.
Three, and this is the one that costs money. It does not displace federal law.
The FDCPA's timing rule at 15 U.S.C. 1692c(a)(1) is not a fixed window. It prohibits a debt collector from communicating at any unusual time or place, or a time or place known or which should be known to be inconvenient to the consumer, and provides that in the absence of knowledge to the contrary the collector shall assume that the convenient time is after 8 a.m. and before 9 p.m. local time at the consumer's location. The hours are a presumption about inconvenience, not the rule itself. A collector with actual knowledge that a different time is inconvenient violates the section even at midday.
Regulation F carries that forward and is medium-neutral. 12 C.F.R. 1006.6(b)(1)(i) prohibits communicating at any unusual time, or at a time the debt collector knows or should know is inconvenient, and provides that in the absence of knowledge to the contrary a time before 8:00 a.m. and after 9:00 p.m. local time at the consumer's location is inconvenient. It applies to emails and texts, not only calls.
And the Bureau's Official Interpretations answer the question Florida's legislature answered the other way. Comment 6(b)(1)(i)-1 provides that an electronic communication occurs when the debt collector sends it, not when the consumer receives or views it.
Preemption runs one direction only. 15 U.S.C. 1692n provides that the federal act does not annul, alter, or affect state debt collection laws except to the extent those laws are inconsistent, and then only to the extent of the inconsistency, and that a state law is not inconsistent if the protection it affords is greater than the federal protection. Florida reinforces the point internally at Fla. Stat. 559.552, which provides that nothing in the state law limits the continued applicability of the federal act in this state.
Federal law is a floor. A state law that is less restrictive than the federal standard does not displace it; it simply leaves the federal standard as the operative one.
So the practical outcome is this. An email sent to a Florida consumer at 11 p.m. may well be immune from a claim under Section 559.72(17) after May 16, 2025. If the sender is a debt collector under federal law, that same email is sent at a presumptively inconvenient time under Regulation F, and the send-based timing rule means the sender cannot point to when the consumer opened it.
What it means practically
Know which category you are in. A third-party collection agency is a debt collector under federal law, is subject to Regulation F, and gets no benefit from Florida's amendment for timing purposes. A creditor collecting its own consumer accounts in its own name is generally outside the federal act, as our companion post on the Florida Consumer Collection Practices Act explains, and for that business the Florida amendment is a genuine and useful change.
That is a strange result and it is worth saying plainly: the Florida amendment helps most precisely the businesses that Florida law, not federal law, is the only thing regulating.
Do not extend the carve-out past its text. Email only, to an email address only, and only as to the time window.
Remember Regulation F's other requirements. Electronic communications require a clear and conspicuous statement describing a reasonable and simple method to opt out of further electronic communications to that address or number. A medium-specific opt-out request must be honored. The call frequency presumption at 12 C.F.R. 1006.14(b)(2), seven calls in seven consecutive days for a particular debt and no call within seven days of a telephone conversation about that debt, is a call rule and does not cap emails, but the general harassment prohibition does not disappear because the medium changed.
And watch the Florida remedies. A violation of Section 559.72 carries actual damages plus statutory damages up to $1,000, court costs and reasonable attorney's fees, and in a class action an aggregate award capped at the lesser of $500,000 or one percent of net worth. The limitations period is two years.
When to call a lawyer
When you are designing or changing a collection communications program, and before adopting any after-hours sending practice on the strength of the 2025 amendment.
Why this is not a do-it-yourself problem
The amendment is one sentence, it is written in plain English, and reading it correctly requires knowing four things that are not in it: that it carves out email but not text, that it leaves the rest of Section 559.72 fully applicable to the carved-out email, that federal law reaches the same conduct on a different and medium-neutral standard, and that federal preemption protects more-protective state law without displacing more-protective federal law. A business that reads the sentence and changes its send schedule has done exactly what the sentence appears to permit and may have walked straight into the federal rule. The compliance question is not what Florida allows. It is which of two overlapping regimes governs the business, and that turns on a definitional question about the business itself, not about the communication.
Talk to us
HDD Law Firm represents businesses in commercial disputes and litigation in the Florida state courts, the Southern, Middle and Northern Districts of Florida, and the Eleventh Circuit. If your business communicates with consumers about accounts receivable, contact us to discuss your matter.
Sources
ā CS/CS/SB 232 (2025), Debt Collection, bill history and votes (The Florida Senate)
ā CS/CS/SB 232 (2025), enrolled bill text (The Florida Senate)
ā Chapter 2025-23, Laws of Florida
ā Fla. Stat. 559.72, Prohibited practices generally, current text
ā Fla. Stat. 559.72 (2024), prior text of subsection (17)
ā Fla. Stat. 559.77, Civil remedies
ā Fla. Stat. 559.552, Relationship of state and federal law
ā 15 U.S.C. 1692c, Communication in connection with debt collection
ā 15 U.S.C. 1692n, Relation to State laws
ā 12 C.F.R. 1006.6, Communications in connection with debt collection (eCFR)
ā 12 C.F.R. 1006.14, Harassing, oppressive, or abusive conduct (eCFR)
ā Supplement I to Part 1006, Official Interpretations (Regulation F) (eCFR)
ā CFPB, Debt Collection Practices (Regulation F) final rule
ā Florida Office of Financial Regulation, Consumer Collection Agencies
Disclaimer
This post discusses publicly reported legal developments for general informational purposes. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney client relationship, and it does not reflect the firmās position in any pending matter. Outcomes depend on the specific facts and the governing law of the relevant jurisdiction.