The Florida Supreme Court has amended the Florida Bar admissions rules (the Rules of the Supreme Court Relating to Admissions to the Bar), including a change that lets an incomplete application be inactivated rather than terminated. In a unanimous per curiam opinion issued October 22, 2026, in In re: Petition to Amend the Rules of the Supreme Court Relating to Admissions to the Bar, No. SC2026-0249, the Court adopted the Florida Board of Bar Examiners’ proposal, with minor revisions. The amendments become effective December 21, 2026.
The rules covered
The Board’s petition proposed amendments to rules 1-63.5 (Documents Filed by Registrant or Applicant), 2-28 (Application Fee for Reapplication for Admission Based on Rehabilitation), 2-29 (Stale File Fee), 3-14.3 (Defective Applications), 3-14.6 (Non-Compliance), 3-22.1 (Investigative Hearing Cost), 3-22.3 (Investigative Hearing Postponement), 3-23.3 (Formal Hearing Cost), 3-23.5 (Formal Hearing Postponement), 4-43.1 ($325), 4-43.2 ($625), and 4-46 (Reapplication after Postponement). The Court published the proposed amendments for comment and received none.
What changed
The opinion discusses the more significant amendments. Rule 3-14.6 now provides that an application by an applicant who has not passed all portions of the Florida Bar Examination may be inactivated, instead of terminated, for failure to comply with outstanding requests and inquiries by the Board within 90 days. The application may be reactivated for a fee of $200 once the applicant has complied with all outstanding requests. That inactivation option is available only to applicants who have not yet passed every portion of the exam. An applicant who has already passed all portions of the Bar Examination but still fails to comply with the Board’s requests and inquiries within the same 90 days faces the rule’s other, harsher consequence: termination of the Bar application and a required reapplication, with payment of all fees as if applying for the first time.
Rule 4-46 changes the timeline for early notice of an applicant’s postponement of a Bar examination from 7 days before the commencement of the examination to 14 days. The opinion also states that the rules are amended “to reflect an increase in certain fees for applicants due to inflation and increased costs.”
What this does and does not mean for the Florida Bar admissions rules. The opinion text describes only the rule 3-14.6 change, the rule 4-46 change and the fee increases in general terms. It does not list the individual fee amounts in its text; those appear in the appendix, where struck and underscored figures show these changes: the copy fee for the first page of a document from $25 to $35 and for a copy of the Bar Application from $50 to $75 (rule 1-63.5); the fee for reapplication based on rehabilitation from $2,200 to $3,000 (2-28); the stale-file fee for an application filed within 5 years from $525 to $725 (2-29(a)); the defective-application fee from $150 to $200 (3-14.3); a new $200 reactivation fee for an inactivated application (3-14.6); the investigative hearing cost from $250 to $500 (3-22.1); investigative hearing postponement fees from $75 to $100 and from $125 to $175 (3-22.3); the formal hearing cost from $600 to $825 (3-23.3); formal hearing postponement fees from $250 to $350 and from $600 to $825 (3-23.5); the examination fees in rules 4-43.1 and 4-43.2 from $325 to $450 and from $625 to $850; and the reexamination fees after postponement from $100 to $150 and from $200 to $300 (4-46). The figures in the rule titles quoted above are the old amounts. The opinion states that the filing of a motion for rehearing shall not alter the effective date. The Court was unanimous, and no one wrote separately.
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Read the opinion (PDF): Download the opinion (PDF)
Source: In re: Petition to Amend the Rules of the Supreme Court Relating to Admissions to the Bar, No. SC2026-0249 (Fla. Oct. 22, 2026). This article is general information, not legal advice.