This is a day for good news.

Florida has a state preemption statute: firearms regulation is the provenance of the state, not lower level local jurisdictions. Even better, Florida law includes significant civil penalties for hopped up local politicians that try passing their own little gun control laws in their little ponds.

Naturally, they don’t like that. What? Hold us responsible for breaking the law? We have sovereign immunity!

Today, the Florida Supreme Court disagreed with the wanna-be lawbreakers.

The imposition of these civil statutory actions for violations of the Preemption Statute does not violate governmental function immunity. It is not a core municipal function to occupy an area that the Legislature has preempted, and local governments have no lawful discretion or authority to enact ordinances that violate state preemption. See Fla. Power Corp., 579 So. 2d at 107 (“While the authority given to cities and counties in Florida is broad, both the constitution and statutes recognize that cities and counties have no authority to act in areas that the legislature has preempted.”).

Accordingly, we conclude that the First District did not err in concluding that governmental function immunity does not prohibit the statutory actions in section 790.33(3)(f).

III. CONCLUSION
For the reasons explained above, we conclude that neither legislative immunity nor governmental function immunity prohibit the statutory actions and penalties in section 790.33(3)(c), (d), and (f). Accordingly, we approve the First District’s decision in City of Weston.

Anyone stupid enough to try passing local gun control laws in Florida now definitively faces fines up to $5,000, and damages up to $100,000.

Best of all:

public funds may not be used to defend or reimburse the unlawful conduct of any person found to have knowingly and willfully violated this section.

Violators are out of personal pocket for those bucks. Not the taxpayers, not the city’s insurance company.