Yes. Since October 1, 2025, refusing a lawful breath or urine test after a DUI arrest in Florida is a crime on its own, separate from the DUI charge. A first refusal is a second-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine, and it still triggers a one-year driver’s license suspension. A second refusal is a first-degree misdemeanor, with up to one year in jail and an 18-month suspension.
What Trenton’s Law changed
For years, the standard advice from friends and the internet was that refusing the breath test costs you your license and nothing more. That was roughly true. Florida’s implied consent law suspended your license for a refusal, and prosecutors could tell the jury you refused, but the refusal itself was not a charge unless you had refused before.
Trenton’s Law, passed as HB 687 and signed June 5, 2025, ended that. The law is named for Trenton Stewart, an 18-year-old killed in a 2023 DUI crash. It rewrote section 316.1939 so that a first refusal is a criminal offense. Officers now read a criminal warning as part of the implied consent notice before asking you to blow. The same law also raised DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide to first-degree felonies for people with prior convictions.
The administrative side did not move. A first refusal still means a one-year suspension by the DHSMV. A second refusal still means 18 months. Those suspensions run on their own track and do not wait for the criminal case.
What happens on a first refusal in Miami-Dade?
A refusal in Miami-Dade now produces two counts on the arrest form instead of one: the DUI and the refusal. At first appearance, which happens within 24 hours of booking at Turner Guilford Knight, the judge sets bond on both. The refusal count carries its own exposure of up to 60 days in county jail, even if the DUI charge is later dropped or reduced.
A prior refusal anywhere in Florida matters. The statute looks at whether your license has previously been suspended for a refusal. If it has, the new refusal is charged as a first-degree misdemeanor, with a maximum of one year in jail, regardless of how the earlier DUI case ended.
One detail the statute keeps separate: the criminal refusal provision covers breath and urine tests. Blood draws fall under a different subsection, and refusing a lawful blood test still carries the license suspension without the new criminal count.
Does refusing still help my DUI case?
This is the question people ask most, and the honest answer is that it is now a trade with a price on both sides. Without a breath number, the state has to prove impairment through the officer’s observations, the roadside exercises and any video. That can be harder for a prosecutor. But the refusal is admissible at trial, the jury hears that you declined, and you now face a second charge that did not exist before October 2025.
The one-year suspension also lands immediately. After a refusal, you have 10 days from the arrest to request a formal review hearing with the DHSMV or to apply for a hardship license. Miss that window and the suspension simply takes effect.
Are DUIs still being reduced to reckless driving?
Often, yes, though the public numbers come from North Florida, not from here. On October 29, 2026, the News4JAX I-Team reviewed five years of court records in Duval and Clay counties and found that nearly three in ten DUI arrests ended as reckless driving. The same review found 368 people in Duval arrested for DUI more than once in five years, 122 of whom had at least one charge reduced.
No comparable dataset for Miami-Dade has been published, so nobody should assume the rate is the same in this county. What the Duval and Clay figures show is that first-offense DUI cases are still routinely negotiated, and a reduction to reckless driving keeps a person out of the mandatory DUI penalties. A refusal count complicates that negotiation because the prosecutor now has a second charge to hold or trade.
What this means if you are charged in Miami-Dade
Treat a refusal arrest as two cases from day one. The DUI will go through the usual Miami-Dade County Court track. The refusal count travels with it but can be resolved separately, and prosecutors can keep it alive even when they agree to reduce the DUI.
Act on the license first. The 10-day deadline to ask for a DHSMV hearing or a hardship permit does not care about the criminal docket. For a first refusal, the suspension is one year; a hardship license is the only way to keep driving to work during most of that time.
Check your history before deciding anything. If your license was ever suspended for a refusal, even years ago in another county, the new charge is the more serious version. Pulling your DHSMV driving record answers that question in minutes.
Ask whether the test was lawful. The criminal refusal charge depends on the officer having had probable cause for the DUI arrest and on the warning being read correctly. Those are the points a DUI lawyer in Miami-Dade will look at first, along with the stop itself and the roadside video.
At a glance
- Trenton’s Law (HB 687) took effect October 1, 2025.
- First breath or urine test refusal: second-degree misdemeanor, up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine, plus a one-year license suspension.
- Second refusal: first-degree misdemeanor, up to one year in jail, 18-month suspension.
- The refusal is admissible at trial, and the refusal count can survive even if the DUI is reduced.
- You have 10 days from arrest to request a DHSMV review hearing or hardship license.
- The widely quoted 30 percent DUI reduction rate is from Duval and Clay counties; no Miami-Dade figure has been published.
This article is general information about Florida law and Miami-Dade procedure as of its publication date. It is not legal advice. Laws change, and the facts of a case matter.
