FL 11th Circuit (Miami-Dade): Eleventh Judicial Circuit (Miami-Dade) Administrative Order…

No longer in force

This order is no longer in force. AO 26-18, signed 2026-06-11 and effective 2026-06-15, rescinds AO 26-15 by number and carries a caption that incorporates AO 26-04’s subject; AO 26-15’s own text could not be retrieved, so the chain from AO 26-04 to AO 26-15 to AO 26-18 is inferred from that caption and from the 17th Circuit’s record that its May 2026 amendment was coordinated with AO 26-15, rather than read from an instrument that names AO 26-04 (the verification notes above set out the evidence). Whatever the precise lineage, nothing of AO 26-04’s regime survives: Florida Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.515(d)(2), effective 2026-06-15, now governs filings statewide, and companion order AOSC26-12 bars Florida courts from imposing AI disclosure or certification requirements “whether through local administrative orders, court policies, judicial practices and procedures, or other means.”

Everything below describes what this order required while it was operative. It is retained because filings made in that window are still judged against it. It does not state current practice, and a filing workflow should not be built from it.

What the order required

Chief Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan of Florida’s Eleventh Judicial Circuit (Miami-Dade County) issued Administrative Order AO 26-04 on January 15, 2026. The order applies to “attorneys and self-represented litigants appearing before the Circuit and County Courts of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit” and imposes a disclosure-and-certification regime:

1. Disclosure on the face of the filing. Any use of generative AI in preparing a pleading, motion, memorandum, response, proposed order, or other court record must be disclosed on the face of the filing.
2. Mandatory certification language. The order prescribes specific certification language affirming that all factual assertions, legal authority, and citations have been independently reviewed and verified.
3. Prohibition on fabricated authority. The order expressly prohibits submission of fictitious, fabricated, or hallucinated legal authority, statutes, quotations, or facts, as well as reliance on AI-generated citations without independent verification.
4. Sanctions toolkit. Available sanctions include striking the filing, denying relief, monetary sanctions, contempt, and referral to The Florida Bar.

Practitioner workflow while the order was in force

Miami-Dade is one of the largest civil dockets in the United States, so while the order was operative it reached a substantial share of Florida state-court practice. Firms with Eleventh Circuit matters carried disclosure-and-certification language in every brief template, and because the certification text was prescribed verbatim, the circuit’s exact wording had to be used rather than a firm’s own.

Those templates are now obsolete for Miami-Dade filings and should be retired rather than carried forward. Rule 2.515(d)(2) imposes no disclosure obligation; what it requires is that cited authorities exist and are accurately cited.

Florida bar discipline runs in parallel with the order’s enforcement: a violation that produces a hallucinated citation can trigger both court sanctions under AO 26-04 and a Florida Bar referral. See Florida Bar Ethics Op. 24-1 for the bar-side framework.

Scope

Eleventh Judicial Circuit only (Miami-Dade County, Circuit and County Courts). For practice in adjacent circuits (Broward, 17th; Palm Beach, 15th), each circuit has its own administrative order with broadly similar requirements but different prescribed language; see those entries.

Primary source

AO 26-04 (HTML): https://www.jud11.flcourts.org/docs/ao-html/1b10ef43-b414-40e5-88d7-401f46d0a081.html