FL 18th Circuit (Brevard, Seminole): Eighteenth Judicial Circuit (Brevard/Seminole) Admin…

No longer in force

This order was rescinded 2026-06-01 by AO 26-24. 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 Melanie Chase of Florida’s Eighteenth Judicial Circuit (Brevard and Seminole counties) issued AO 26-10 on February 13, 2026. The order was circuit-wide and its text is nearly identical to the Eleventh Circuit’s AO 26-04, issued four weeks earlier. Like AO 26-04, and unlike the 17th Circuit’s January order and the 15th Circuit’s later April order, it did not require identification of the specific AI tool used.

Filings in the 18th Circuit where generative AI was used required a disclosure block on the face of the filing plus the prescribed certification language, and because each circuit’s certification text differed verbatim, firms working across Florida maintained a template per circuit. The statewide rule removed that per-circuit divergence along with the disclosure duty itself.

How the order worked in practice

The certification text reached further than a routine candor-to-the-tribunal acknowledgment. By requiring the filer to certify that “all factual assertions, legal authority, and citations have been independently reviewed and verified,” AO 26-10 imposed a per-filing audit obligation. A firm that kept a verification log for AI-assisted filings produced the artifact this certification swore to; a firm without that workflow was signing language that could outrun its evidence. The same verification log is what now supports the Rule 2.515(d)(2) representation, so the workflow outlives the order even though the certification does not.

Sanctions were layered: striking the filing, denial of relief, monetary sanctions, contempt, and referral to The Florida Bar. The Bar-referral path was the consequence partners flagged, because a disciplinary file can surface at LPL renewal regardless of how the referral itself resolves. While the order applied, Brevard and Seminole practice treated AO 26-10 as a procedural rule with discipline-side consequences, not a soft disclosure norm.

The order reached state civil, criminal, family, and probate filings in the circuit, broader than orders limited to a single docket type. Firms carried the disclosure-and-certification language in their filing templates rather than drafting it per matter; those template blocks are now obsolete for 18th Circuit filings and should be removed rather than carried forward.

Primary source

AO 26-10, text of record: Internet Archive capture of the circuit’s /document/26-10/ page, 2026-03-09, taken while the order was in force. The live path now serves the rescinding order and no longer carries AO 26-10.

Rescinding instrument: AO 26-24, flcourts18.org.