Background
The Florida Bar’s Appellate Court Rules Committee filed a report proposing amendments to five Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure: rule 9.100 (Original Proceedings), rule 9.210 (Briefs), rule 9.310 (Stay Pending Review), rule 9.800 (Uniform Citation System), and rule 9.900 (Forms). The Board of Governors of The Florida Bar unanimously recommended acceptance of the proposed amendments, and the Florida Supreme Court published them for public comment.
One comment was received, directed at the proposed changes to rule 9.100. In response, the Rules Committee withdrew its proposal to amend rule 9.100 and asked the Court to adopt the remaining amendments as proposed. The Court accepted the withdrawal and declined to amend rule 9.100 at this time, proceeding instead with the other four rules — with additional modifications of its own to rule 9.210 and a minor adjustment to rule 9.900.
The Court’s Holding
The Court adopted amendments to rules 9.210, 9.310, 9.800, and 9.900. The most significant change to rule 9.210 is the addition of a new subdivision (b)(3) requiring that every initial brief include a jurisdictional statement explaining either why the order appealed is final, or — if nonfinal — the procedural rule or statutory provision conferring jurisdiction and the relevant facts establishing it. The Court also amended renumbered subdivision (b)(6) to require that the argument section of the initial brief include, for each issue, a citation to the record showing where the issue was preserved and a statement of the applicable standard of review. The certificate-of-compliance requirement was clarified to apply only to computer-generated briefs.
For rule 9.310, governing stays pending review, the Court amended the automatic-stay provision for money judgments to remove the word “principal” from the bond-amount formula and replaced ambiguous language regarding postjudgment interest with the phrase “in effect on the date the judgment is filed,” making clear that the bond must equal the judgment amount plus twice the statutory interest rate as of the judgment date. The Court also updated case citation formats in rule 9.800 to reflect Florida courts’ shift to four-digit year and four-digit case-number designators, and amended the nonfinal-order notice-of-appeal forms in rule 9.900 to require filers to cite the specific subdivision of the appellate rule under which review is sought and to clarify that the date field refers to the date of the order being appealed. All amendments take effect September 1, 2026.
Key Takeaways
- Initial briefs filed in Florida appellate courts must now include a jurisdictional statement — either confirming finality or identifying the specific rule or statute authorizing appeal of a nonfinal order.
- The argument section of each initial brief must now explicitly cite the record location where each issue was preserved and state the applicable standard of appellate review.
- The automatic-stay bond formula for money judgments is clarified: the bond equals the full judgment amount plus twice the statutory interest rate in effect on the date the judgment is filed, eliminating prior ambiguity about whether “principal” excluded prejudgment-interest components.
- Notices of appeal of nonfinal orders must now identify the specific subdivision of the appellate rule — not just the rule number — on which appellate jurisdiction rests.
- The proposed amendment to rule 9.100 (Original Proceedings) was withdrawn after a public comment and was not adopted.
Why It Matters
These amendments impose new mandatory content requirements on Florida appellate practitioners. The jurisdictional-statement and preservation-citation requirements in rule 9.210 codify practices that courts already expected but that were not expressly mandated, reducing the risk of briefs being stricken or arguments being deemed waived for failure to demonstrate preservation. Appellate lawyers will need to audit their brief templates before the September 1, 2026 effective date to ensure compliance.
The clarification to the automatic-stay bond formula in rule 9.310 resolves a practical ambiguity that affected how litigants — particularly judgment debtors seeking to pause execution while pursuing appeals — calculated the required bond amount. By anchoring the interest-rate multiplier to the date of judgment entry and removing the limiting word “principal,” the amended rule provides a cleaner, more predictable formula and reduces disputes over bond sufficiency.