E-Verify requirements in Florida: public agencies, 25-employee private employers, and contractors

As of September 2026, Florida's E-Verify rule has two different starting lines. Public employers, and contractors and subcontractors on public contracts, have had to use E-Verify for every new hire since January 1, 2021. Private employers only joined the mandate once they reach 25 or more employees, company-wide, starting July 1, 2023. Both requirements sit in the same statute, Fla. Stat. section 448.095, but they are not the same rule, and a private employer under 25 employees is not covered by either one.

Who is covered, and since when

The statute's definition of "employee" excludes casual labor performed entirely in a private residence and excludes independent contractors, so a company that primarily engages 1099 contractors does not count those relationships toward the 25-employee threshold. The 25-employee count is company-wide, not per location, so a retailer with five Florida stores of six employees each is covered even though no single store reaches 25.

What Florida employers must do, and by when

1. Register with E-Verify if not already enrolled, before the obligation applies to your next new hire.
2. Complete Form I-9 in full for the new hire on the standard federal timeline.
3. Create the E-Verify case within three business days of the first day the employee begins work for pay. This is Florida's own statutory deadline, tighter and more explicit than the general federal E-Verify guidance other states rely on by default.
4. If E-Verify is unavailable for three business days or more starting from that first paid day, use Form I-9 documentation to verify the employee instead, and keep a record of the outage (a screenshot or the system status notice) to document why E-Verify was not used.
5. Certify compliance annually. A covered employer certifies, on its first tax return each calendar year to its unemployment tax service provider, that it is complying with section 448.095.
6. Contractors on public contracts must register with and use E-Verify for the term of the contract and collect a sworn affidavit from each subcontractor confirming the subcontractor does not employ unauthorized workers.

Records to keep

Covered employers must retain, for at least three years, a copy of the documentation generated by the E-Verify system for each verification, along with any official verification the system produced. Keep this alongside the employee's Form I-9 rather than in a separate system, since an auditor is likely to ask for both together. If a hire fell into the three-business-day outage exception, keep the outage documentation with the same file, since it is the evidence that justifies using I-9 documents alone for that particular hire.

Penalties

Florida's penalty structure is graduated and administered by the Department of Commerce, and it only began applying to violations starting January 1, 2024:

• First and second findings that a covered employer failed to use E-Verify bring a notice from the department and an opportunity to cure, rather than an immediate fine.
• Third finding within a 24-month period: the department must impose a fine of $1,000 per day until the employer provides proof of compliance.
• Public contracts: a contractor or subcontractor found not to be using E-Verify on a public contract risks termination of that contract, separate from the per-day fine that can also apply.

The $1,000-per-day figure is a statutory ceiling tied specifically to the third violation within the 24-month window; it is not the consequence of a single missed verification, though a single missed verification is still a finding that counts toward that total.

The department's enforcement only reaches employers actually covered by the mandate. A private employer under 25 employees that never enrolls in E-Verify is not fined under section 448.095 for that choice, because the statute simply does not apply to it yet. That business still owes a correctly completed Form I-9 for every hire under separate federal law, which carries its own, unrelated penalty structure if it is done wrong.

A worked example: crossing the 25-employee line mid-year

This is an invented example to show how the threshold applies, not a real company. Suppose a Tampa marketing agency has 22 employees in January and hires four more between February and June, reaching 26 by July. Florida's mandate is not triggered by a fixed date on the calendar the way North Carolina's phased rollout was; it applies once the employer meets the 25-employee threshold and covers new hires from that point forward. The four people hired on the way from 22 to 26 were not covered until the agency actually reached 25, but any hire made after crossing that line needs an E-Verify case within three business days of that new hire's first paid day. The 22 people already on staff when the agency crossed the threshold do not need to be run through E-Verify retroactively; the statute reaches new hires, not existing employees.

The same logic runs in reverse for a business that shrinks below 25. The statute is written around the employer's status at the time each new person is hired, so a business that dips under 25 after a layoff and then hires again while still under the threshold is not covered for that hire, even though it was covered months earlier at a higher headcount. Recheck company-wide headcount at each new hire rather than relying on a count taken earlier in the year.

How this sits on top of Form I-9

E-Verify runs off the data already entered on Form I-9 and cannot be used before the I-9 is complete. Florida's statute layers its own three-business-day deadline and its own outage exception on top of the federal I-9 process, but it does not shorten the I-9 timeline itself or let an employer skip any I-9 step. An employer that is not yet at 25 employees, and has no public contract, still owes a properly completed Form I-9 for every hire under federal law even though Florida's E-Verify mandate does not reach it yet.

What a staffing agency placing workers into Florida must do

A staffing or recruiting agency is a "private employer" under section 448.095 with respect to its own employees, so the agency's own company-wide headcount, not the headcount at any single client site, determines whether the 25-employee threshold applies to the agency's hiring. An agency with 40 employees nationally that places 10 people into a Florida client is covered by the mandate for those Florida hires even though the client site itself might have far fewer than 25 people. If the agency's placement is connected to a public contract, the agency is covered regardless of its size, the same as any other contractor or subcontractor on that work, and may need to provide the same sworn affidavit a subcontractor provides. A client's own compliance does not substitute for the agency's; each employer of record in the chain answers for its own hires.

This matters most for a mid-size agency that sits close to the 25-employee line itself. An agency with 18 W-2 employees that also uses independent contractor recruiters is not automatically covered, since Florida's statute excludes independent contractors from the employee count, but an agency should confirm those contractor relationships are correctly classified before relying on that exclusion. A worker treated as a contractor for headcount purposes but functioning as an employee under Florida's or the federal test is a separate legal problem on top of any E-Verify question, and it is the kind of issue an audit is likely to surface at the same time.

A compliance checklist for Florida employers

1. Count total company-wide headcount, not per-location headcount, against the 25-employee threshold.
2. Confirm whether any part of the business holds a public contract, which brings E-Verify in regardless of size.
3. Complete Form I-9 in full for every new hire, then create the E-Verify case within three business days of the first paid day.
4. Document any E-Verify outage that pushes a hire onto the I-9-only fallback.
5. Keep E-Verify case documentation for at least three years, alongside the I-9.
6. Certify compliance on the first unemployment tax filing of the calendar year, if covered.
7. If using a staffing agency for Florida roles, confirm the agency's own company-wide headcount and public- contract exposure, rather than assuming the client's status controls.

For the sequence of onboarding steps around a new hire more broadly, see the contractor onboarding checklist. For how Florida compares with the other states that mandate E-Verify, see E-Verify requirements by state.