The moment an officer asks you to submit to a breath test, a calculation begins. Before October 1, 2025, refusing that test carried only an administrative license suspension, a civil consequence you could fight separately from any criminal case. Trenton’s Law changed that math entirely. Under the new law, a refusal is now a criminal offense for every driver, and for those with a prior refusal on record, the exposure is steeper still. The evidence a refusal creates follows you into the courtroom.
Every attorney at Ali & Blankner is a former prosecutor. We’ve watched these cases get built from the other side, which means we don’t just know how to defend against a refusal charge. We know exactly how the state assembles one. That perspective shapes how we approach every DUI case we handle in Orlando.
What Trenton’s Law Actually Changed
Trenton’s Law, enacted as House Bill 687 and codified as Chapter 2025-121, took effect October 1, 2025. The law is named for Trenton Stewart, an 18-year-old Stetson University football player killed in May 2023 when a repeat DUI offender drove the wrong way at high speed in St. Johns County.
The legislation made two targeted changes to Florida’s DUI statutes. First, it created a new criminal offense for refusing to submit to a breath or urine test after a lawful DUI arrest, making a first refusal a second-degree misdemeanor and a second or subsequent refusal a first-degree misdemeanor. Second, it elevated a second or subsequent DUI manslaughter or vehicular homicide conviction from a second-degree felony carrying up to 15 years to a first-degree felony carrying up to 30.
Why Refusing a Breath Test No Longer Removes the State’s Evidence
A persistent assumption about DUI stops is that refusing a breath test strips the prosecution of its strongest evidence and leaves the state without a case. That was never entirely accurate, and after Trenton’s Law, it’s more misleading than ever.
Under Florida Statute 316.1932, a refusal has always been admissible at trial as evidence of consciousness of guilt, meaning the jury can be told you refused and can draw an inference from that choice. That rule didn’t change. What changed is that a first refusal is now a separate second-degree misdemeanor, punishable by up to 60 days in jail, while a second or subsequent refusal is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to one year. Every driver who refuses now faces both the administrative suspension and a criminal charge, and the driver who has been through this before faces the more serious misdemeanor. Refusing doesn’t eliminate evidence. It adds a charge.
What the State Still Has to Prove
A new criminal offense doesn’t mean conviction is automatic. To prevail on a refusal charge, the state must establish three distinct elements: the driver was lawfully arrested for DUI, the officer properly delivered the implied consent warning, and the driver refused after receiving it.
Each element is a potential point of challenge. The lawfulness of the stop and arrest matters because everything that follows an unlawful traffic stop, including the refusal itself, can be subject to a suppression motion. The implied consent warning presents its own opening. Officers read from a standardized script, and since Trenton’s Law now requires that script to disclose the criminal consequences of refusal, any deviation or omission from the required language is a fact pattern worth examining. A warning that doesn’t accurately convey what a driver is legally required to understand may not satisfy the “properly informed” element the state needs to prove.
Challenging the Breath Test & the Implied Consent Warning
When a driver submits to a breath test in Orange County, the instrument used is the Intoxilyzer 8000. This device is regulated statewide by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Alcohol Testing Program, which holds exclusive authority over the inspection, calibration, and registration of all breath test instruments used for evidentiary purposes in Florida. Maintenance and calibration records are subject to discovery, and deficiencies in that record have supported suppression motions in Florida courts. An Intoxilyzer 8000 that hasn’t been properly inspected or maintained on the schedule FDLE requires may produce results a court won’t admit. We routinely request these records and review them as part of building a defense.
Field sobriety tests, typically administered before any breath test, carry their own challenges. These tests are designed to generate observations the officer then interprets, and that interpretation is subjective. Whether the conditions were appropriate, whether the instructions were properly given, and whether the scoring was accurate all matter when the state tries to use those results to establish probable cause for the arrest.
Where These Cases Are Heard in Orlando
Misdemeanor DUI and refusal cases are heard in Orange County Court at the Orange County Courthouse, which sits within the Ninth Judicial Circuit serving both Orange and Osceola counties. Felony DUI cases, including those elevated by Trenton’s Law’s manslaughter enhancement, move to Circuit Court within the same system.
The administrative side of a DUI arrest runs on a separate track from the criminal case. After a suspension, a driver has 10 days from the date of arrest to request a formal DHSMV review hearing to challenge the administrative license suspension. Missing that deadline closes off one avenue for contesting the suspension without affecting the criminal proceeding. Both timelines start running the moment of arrest. A driver who waits to consult an attorney may lose the DHSMV hearing opportunity before they even know it existed.
Understanding Your Evidence Before the State Does
Trenton’s Law didn’t make DUI cases impossible to defend. It made the evidence picture more complex, particularly for drivers who carry a prior record into a new stop. The strongest response to that complexity is knowing precisely what evidence exists, where it came from, and whether each piece was obtained and preserved in a way that will hold up in court.
That means examining the stop, the implied consent warning, the breath test records if a test was taken, the field sobriety observations, and whether the refusal charge itself was properly supported. Each layer has its own legal standards, and the state has to meet them all. Our attorneys at Ali & Blankner built their approach on the inside knowledge of how prosecutors put these cases together. If you’re facing a DUI or refusal charge, reach out to us at (407) 753-1312 for a confidential consultation.