Posted by Nydia Streets of Streets Law in Florida Domestic Violence

In Florida, “[t]o establish a showing of ‘stalking’ under the statutes, a petitioner must show evidence of ‘repeated acts’ of ‘following, harassment, or cyberstalking.’” Hoover v. Peak, 1D2023-2529 (Fla. 1st DCA August 7, 2024) (internal citations omitted). This recent appellate case analyzes a stalking injunction entered against a father who was attending his daughter’s school orientation.

Precipitating the filing of the injunction at issue in this case was an incident in which the accused was arrested for child abuse after being accused of aiming a firework at children and one was injured. Additionally, the accused separately had a domestic violence injunction entered against him concerning his estranged wife. The mother of the injured child later attended a high school orientation with the child, and saw the accused there with his child. The mother was also accompanied by the accused’s estranged wife who was her friend. Throughout their time at the orientation, the accused maintained that he tried to avoid contact with the other parties, but their paths crossed multiple times during a part of the orientation in which the parents “walk the schedule” of their child, mimicking what an average day of going from class to class would be like for the child. Based on this, the mother of the child injured by the firework petitioned for a stalking injunction against the accused. It was granted, and the accused appealed.

Holding there was no substantial evidence that the accused repeatedly harassed the mother, the appellate court stated “Here, nothing in the record suggests that Peak met her burden below to show [the accused] ‘followed’ or ‘harassed’ [the mother] so as to warrant the placement of a permanent injunction with restrictions on certain liberties guaranteed by our state and federal constitutions.” The court concluded “We ‘must be careful not to apply the stalking statute to infringe on another person’s constitutionally protected freedom of association or free speech or apply in an overbroad manner to reach non-malicious conduct.’ [internal citation omitted]. This observation applies here. [The accused] was attending his daughter’s high school orientation with her and his ex-wife. He spent, at most, thirty minutes at the school going from classroom to classroom, ‘walking’ his daughter’s schedule. Nothing about that behavior is malicious or criminal.”

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