Florida Colleges Can Now Point to a Rule When They Say No for Past Misconduct

Last reviewed October 2, 2026

As of August 2026, Florida’s state colleges have a brand-new rule that says, in so many words, that a board of trustees may look at your past and refuse to let you in — or back in. Fla. Admin. Code r. 6A-10.0240, effective August 5, 2026, provides that each Florida College System board of trustees “may consider the past actions of any person applying for admission or enrollment and may deny admission or enrollment to an applicant because of misconduct if determined to be in the best interest” of the institution. If you are a student with a disciplinary record — or a parent of one — that sentence deserves ten minutes of your attention, because it changes how much yesterday’s hearing matters tomorrow.

What the new rule says, and what an old one has said all along

Two rules are in play, and it matters which one you are under.

The new one — Rule 6A-10.0240 (effective August 5, 2026) — governs admission to the 28 Florida College System institutions: the state and community colleges. It gives each board of trustees discretion to deny “admission or enrollment” for misconduct, judged against the institution’s “best interest.” The language reaches applicants and people seeking to enroll again — which is how it touches readmission after a dismissal.

The older one — Rule 6A-10.024, Florida’s statewide articulation agreement — was re-amended effective August 25, 2026, and its misconduct language has been there all along. Buried in the subsections that guarantee Associate in Arts graduates admission to a state university, subsections (3)(b) and (4)(b) carry a savings clause: nothing prevents a postsecondary institution from denying “admission or continued enrollment” based on past misconduct “both on or off campus,” or where past actions were found to “disrupt or interfere” with the operations of any other postsecondary institution. Because the articulation rule is adopted jointly by the State Board of Education and the Board of Governors, that clause reaches the state universities as well as the colleges.

Read those together and three things follow:

1. The AA-transfer guarantee has a misconduct exception. The promise Florida makes to every AA graduate — a seat somewhere in the State University System — does not bind a university to accept a student whose conduct record it does not like. What a community college’s hearing panel wrote about you in year one can decide where you finish your degree in year three.
2. “Continued enrollment” means current students, not just applicants. The articulation rule’s clause expressly covers denying continued enrollment, and the new FCS rule covers “enrollment” — so these are not just admissions-office provisions.
3. Off-campus conduct and conduct at other schools count. The clause says so in terms. A finding at one institution follows you to the next one.

The brakes: what a college still cannot do

Here is what neither rule changes. A currently enrolled student at a Florida public college or university has a constitutionally protected interest in staying enrolled — the courts have said so for decades, and they have said it about Florida schools specifically. The Fifth Circuit’s foundational decision in Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education, 294 F.2d 150 (5th Cir. 1961), and Florida’s own Woody v. Burns, 188 So. 2d 56 (Fla. 1st DCA 1966), require notice and a fair hearing before a tax-supported institution expels a student for misconduct. The Eleventh Circuit held in Barnes v. Zaccari, 669 F.3d 1295 (11th Cir. 2012), that a for-cause discipline policy creates a property interest in continued enrollment; it applied that again at a Florida college in Doe v. Valencia College, 903 F.3d 1220 (11th Cir. 2018) — notice and a hearing come before suspension or expulsion. A Florida appellate court reached the same result against FAU’s Board of Trustees in Lankheim, 992 So. 2d 828 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), and a federal court in Orlando spelled out the minimum in Koeppel v. Romano, 252 F. Supp. 3d 1310 (M.D. Fla. 2017): notice of the charges, an explanation of the evidence, and a real opportunity to tell your side. As recently as January 2026, the Middle District of Florida applied Barnes to hold that a university’s for-cause suspension policy creates exactly that protected interest.

So a Florida public institution that wants to remove a current student over “past misconduct” cannot simply cite the rule and change the roster. It owes due process — and its own published procedures — first. The rules’ real bite lands at the transitions: applying, transferring, and coming back.

What this means in practice

If you are in a conduct proceeding now: the finding is no longer just about this semester’s sanction. Under these rules it is a portable fact that any Florida public institution may weigh against you at the next doorway. Fight the finding, not just the penalty — the difference between “responsible” and “not responsible” on paper now has a longer shelf life than the suspension itself. The framework is on the student conduct defense page.

If you are transferring with a record: application questions about discipline are not formalities. An unexplained or carelessly explained record invites a best-interest denial that no statute guarantees you a hearing on. The explanation — what happened, what was found, what has changed — should be built as carefully as an appeal.

If you are seeking readmission after a dismissal: the new FCS rule cuts both ways. It confirms the board’s discretion to say no — but discretion that must be exercised in “the best interest” of the institution is discretion that can be addressed with evidence: rehabilitation, time, records, references. A readmission file that answers the rule’s own standard is a different thing from a form and a hope.

The takeaway

Florida has now written into its administrative code what colleges have long done quietly: the record follows you. The moment to control that record is during the first proceeding — while the facts are still being found — not years later at an admissions desk that owes you no hearing.

If a conduct finding, a denied transfer, or a readmission fight is in front of you — at a Florida school or anywhere else — I read the full record and build the plan with you: start with the Full Read + Game Plan or a short email about where things stand.