If you’ve followed my work, you know I don’t pull punches when a process is stacked against homeowners. Over the last two years, Citizens, Florida’s insurer of last resort, has pushed thousands of claims out of court and into a special track at the Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH). On paper, it sounded efficient. In practice, it’s been anything but fair for many policyholders.

Now the Legislature is floating HB 459 (2026), which would take that DOAH-centric model and scale it across the market—effectively making DOAH the default arena for all disputed property insurance claims, not just Citizens. If we’re going to expand a system, we’d better be honest about how it’s actually working for the people stuck in it.

What happened inside DOAH with Citizens.

Here’s the unvarnished view from the ground:

  • Citizens has routed a large volume of disputes to DOAH and funded the build-out to handle them. Internal materials and board items show ramping capacity and dedicated budgets to run this pipeline. That raises the first eyebrow: the party you’re fighting is also bankrolling the forum. 1
  • Multiple media reports, including Citizens’ own numbers, paint a lopsided scoreboard. Depending on the time period and dataset, policyholders have been losing the vast majority of cases or accepting nominal settlements (think $250–$500) to stop the bleeding. Even when Citizens characterizes outcomes as “settlements,” the average dollars are a fraction of what it costs to fix a roof, let alone a home. 2
  • Courts have stepped in. A Hillsborough County judge issued an order halting Citizens from forcing these DOAH proceedings, with subsequent appeals and procedural maneuvering keeping the fight alive. DOAH itself asked an appeals court to let it resume. Translation: the legality and constitutionality of this setup are very much in play. 3

To me, those three facts tell one story: fast isn’t the same as fair.

HB 459 would take DOAH statewide. But, will it be fair?

HB 459 rewrites §627.7015 to create a mandatory DOAH-style procedure for all disputed property claims. Either side can file a petition, and an Administrative Law Judge has to issue a coverage decision within 60 days and a final dollar figure within 180 days, with payment or escrow to follow. The bill also repeals several current dispute pathways (including appraisal and the litigation framework that grew around §627.70152) and requires insurers to notify policyholders about this new process at issuance, renewal, and claim time. In short, the forum changes, the timelines compress, and the old off-ramps disappear.

Some parts look good on first read, such as the clear deadlines, consumer pamphlets, and a promise of speed. But the devil, as always, is in who holds the leverage and what rights the homeowner gives up to move fast.

The fairness red flags I see and what would fix them.

1. Forum funding and independence

Citizens’ documents openly describe funding the DOAH apparatus for these cases. If a private carrier world adopts that model, we’ll multiply the perception and maybe the reality of a house-funded house advantage.

Fix: If DOAH becomes the statewide forum, the Legislature should fund it independently, not through carrier-specific contracts tied to case throughput. 4

2. Discovery and due process

A central homeowner complaint is the limited discovery compared to that in court. When you can’t meaningfully test the insurer’s position, “quick” turns into “quietly underpaid.”

Fix: set minimum discovery rights in statute with core document production, reasonable depositions on key disputes (cause, scope, and price), and sanctions for discovery gamesmanship. 5

3. Outcome data and transparency

We shouldn’t be relying on rumors or cherry-picked spreadsheets. Florida should publish quarterly, case-level anonymized metrics that show amounts claimed vs. awarded, settlement bands, time to resolution, representation rates, and post-hearing payment compliance. If the forum is fair, sunlight will prove it. Media digging has filled the vacuum so far, and what they’ve found is not confidence-inspiring. 6

4. Attorney’s fees and offers of judgment

Citizens’ DOAH policies imported fee-shifting dynamics from the court (e.g., §57.105 and §768.79), but the bargaining table looks different when discovery is thin and the forum is fast. A $500 “cost-of-peace” offer shouldn’t be treated as a victory.

Fix: Calibrate fee and offer rules for this forum so homeowners aren’t punished for seeking a fair valuation of their home repairs.

5. Scope: carve-outs for true coverage denials and small claims

HB 459 keeps some carve-outs (fraud, clear non-coverage, sub-$500 disputes). That’s good, but the $500 floor is outdated and invites gamesmanship.

Fix: Raise the floor, and mandate early neutral evaluation on pure coverage denials so homeowners don’t burn their one shot in the wrong forum.

So…will DOAH be fair for non-Citizens policyholders?

It can be, but only if lawmakers learn from the Citizens experiment before cloning it. Here’s my threshold test:

  • Neutral forum, neutral funding
  • Real discovery for real disputes
  • Published outcomes that anyone—homeowner, adjuster, judge—can scrutinize
  • Proportional fee rules so leverage isn’t built into the process

Right now, the track record from Citizens suggests homeowners walk in with less leverage, see fewer tools, and walk out with less money than it takes to fix their homes. That’s not a “faster path to normalcy.” That’s a shortcut to under-indemnity. 7

Where the courts are heading and why it matters for HB 459.

When a circuit judge halts an agency-run arbitration scheme and DOAH itself has to ask an appellate court to let it resume, that’s not a blip; it’s a warning. If the current Citizens setup is teetering on constitutional grounds, duplicating it statewide without structural fixes is asking for more injunctions, more uncertainty, and more whiplash for families trying to rebuild. 8

Bottom line

HB 459’s promise is speed and certainty. Homeowners deserve both, but never at the price of fairness. If Tallahassee wants DOAH to be the future for property claims, then make it independent, transparent, and discovery-competent. Otherwise, we’re just moving the same fights to a forum where the deck is already stacked.

Homeowners pay premiums for indemnity, not for a race to the lowest settlement number. Let’s fix the forum before we force every Floridian into it.

1 Executive Summary, Board of Governors Meeting, Dec. 4, 2024.

2 William Rabb. Citizens No Longer Winning Most Arbitration Cases. They’re Settling for Next to Nil. Insurance Journal. Sept. 16, 2025.

3 William Rabb. Florida Judge Blocks State Agency for Citizens Claims Disputes, But Insurer Appeals. Insurance Journal. Aug. 5, 2025.

4 Executive Summary, Board of Governors Meeting, Dec. 4, 2024.

5 Allaire Conte. Why homeowners are losing 90% of cases against Florida’s biggest insurer. New York Post. Sept. 29, 2025.

6 William Rabb. Citizens No Longer Winning Most Arbitration Cases. They’re Settling for Next to Nil. Insurance Journal. Sept. 16, 2025.

7 Id.

8 William Rabb. Florida Judge Blocks State Agency for Citizens Claims Disputes, But Insurer Appeals. Insurance Journal. Aug. 5, 2025.