Florida Dog Bite Law FirmFor about thirty years, Miami-Dade County banned pit bulls. The ordinance was well known, widely enforced, and the reason a lot of families either rehomed a dog or never moved to the county in the first place.
It is no longer in force. It has not been since October 1, 2023. A great many people in South Florida do not know that — including, sometimes, the people telling them otherwise.
What Florida law says now
Section 767.14 lets local governments regulate dangerous dogs, with a limit:
Read the limit carefully, because it is broader than people assume. It is not only breed. A local ordinance may not target dogs by breed, by weight, or by size.
So a county cannot ban pit bulls. It also cannot write an ordinance imposing special muzzling, penning, insurance, or registration requirements on “dogs over 50 pounds,” which is the usual workaround.
What actually changed in 2023
Florida had restricted breed-specific local ordinances for a long time. The catch was a grandfather clause: ordinances adopted before October 1, 1990 were exempt and could continue.
Two survived on that basis. Miami-Dade County’s pit bull ban, and the City of Sunrise’s 1989 ordinance requiring “pit bull dogs” to be securely penned or muzzled.
House Bill 941 deleted the grandfather clause, effective October 1, 2023. With the exemption gone, the ordinances it had been protecting lost their legal basis.
HB 941 did a second thing worth knowing: it barred governmental public housing authorities from restricting dogs by breed, weight, or size. For residents of public housing who had been told their dog was not allowed, that is a direct change.
Dangerous is now about the dog, not the breed
Florida did not stop regulating dangerous dogs. It changed the unit of analysis from the category to the individual animal.
A dog is classified as dangerous under Florida law based on what it has done — whether it has aggressively bitten, attacked, endangered, or inflicted severe injury on a person; whether it has more than once severely injured or killed a domestic animal off its owner’s property; whether it has, unprovoked, chased or approached someone in a menacing fashion. The dangerous dog framework runs on conduct and evidence, not on appearance.
That is a coherent position, and it happens to match what the claims data shows: the predictors of a serious bite are things like whether the dog was restrained, supervised, socialised, and secured — not what it looks like.
What this means if you were bitten
Be clear about what preemption did and did not do. It changed what counties may regulate. It did not change who is liable when a dog bites someone.
Section 767.04 still makes the owner liable from the first bite, with no requirement to prove the dog had a history and no “one free bite.” It has never mentioned breed and it does not mention breed now.
Some practical consequences:
The breed of the dog is not an element of your claim. You do not have to identify the breed, prove it is a “dangerous breed,” or produce a DNA test. The statute asks whether a dog bit you, not what kind.
“It’s a pit bull” is not a shortcut, in either direction. It does not establish liability and it does not defeat it. Liability turns on the statute.
An owner cannot use the repeal as a defense. That their dog is now lawful to own in Miami-Dade says nothing about whether they are liable for what it did.
Local ordinances still matter — just not breed ones. Leash requirements, at-large rules, confinement rules, and licensing are all still enforceable, and an owner’s violation of one is often useful evidence of the negligent act or omission that defeats the “Bad Dog” sign defense.
Insurance is a separate system, and it did not change
This is the part that catches people out, so it is worth stating plainly.
Section 767.14 binds local governments. It does not bind insurance companies.
Insurers are regulated under an entirely different part of Florida law. A homeowners or renters insurer may still maintain a list of restricted breeds, may still decline to write a policy, and may still exclude liability arising from a particular dog. The repeal of a county ordinance does not reach any of that.
So a Florida dog owner can be entirely lawful under § 767.14 and still find their carrier will not cover a bite. For a victim, that changes the question from “is the owner liable” to “what will actually pay” — which is why which policy responds matters as much as liability does.
Why we write about this
This firm represents people bitten by dogs. It might seem odd for us to spend a page explaining that Florida stopped banning breeds.
It is not odd, because the two positions are the same position. Breed bans did not reduce bites; they gave owners of the wrong-looking dogs a reason to hide them from animal control, and they let owners of the right-looking dogs assume their dog was safe by category. What protects people is holding owners accountable for their own dog’s conduct, which is exactly what § 767.04 does.
A law that says dangerousness is a fact about an individual animal is a law that supports victims. It is also why you will not find breed photographs anywhere on this site — it would be a strange thing to argue in words and undercut in pictures.
If you were told the ban still applies
Check the date on whatever you were told. A great deal of material about Miami-Dade’s ban was written before October 2023 and is still online, still confidently worded, and still wrong.
If a landlord, HOA, housing authority, or insurer has relied on a breed restriction to take action against you, whether that restriction is still enforceable depends on who imposed it — a local government ordinance is preempted, while a private lease or an insurance policy is a different question with a different answer.