Under the Florida mugshot removal law, anyone whose booking photo appears on a commercial mugshot website can demand that the site take it down, at no cost, within 10 calendar days. The rule is Florida Statute 901.43, and it applies whether your case ended in conviction, dismissal, acquittal, or is still pending.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs If the site refuses, the statute gives you a civil cause of action with daily penalties and mandatory attorney fees.
Who Can Ask for Removal
The eligibility bar is low. Section 901.43 does not require you to prove the charges were dropped, that you were acquitted, or that your record was expunged. Any person whose booking photo has been published on a mugshot site can request removal, regardless of how the case turned out.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs An attorney can submit the request on your behalf.
This is what separates a removal request from an expungement. Expungement clears the underlying record and has strict eligibility rules. Removal under 901.43 just gets the photo off a commercial site, and almost anyone qualifies.
What Your Written Request Must Include
The statute is specific about the format of your request, and small mistakes give the site a reason to ignore you. Your request has to contain:
- Enough proof of identity to confirm you are the person in the booking photo.
- Information identifying the specific photo you want removed, such as the URL where it appears or the booking number.
- Delivery by registered mail to the registered agent of the person or entity that published the photo.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs
The registered agent piece matters. Every business entity registered in Florida has a registered agent on file with the Florida Division of Corporations, and you can look the name and address up through Sunbiz.org. A message sent through a website contact form or a generic support email does not satisfy the statute. Registered mail gives you a verifiable delivery date, which is the moment the 10-day clock starts.
Once the site has received a properly formatted request, it has 10 calendar days to remove the photo, and it cannot charge you anything to do so. After removal, the site is also barred from republishing or redisseminating the same photo.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs
No Removal Fees Allowed
The pay-to-remove business model is exactly what the statute is aimed at. Subsection (1) of 901.43 prohibits any person or entity in the business of publishing booking photos from soliciting or accepting a fee or any other form of payment to remove them.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs A site that asks for a payment to take down your photo is already violating Florida law by asking.
What Happens If the Site Refuses
The 10-day deadline is not self-enforcing. If the site ignores your request or refuses to remove the photo, your remedy is to file a civil lawsuit in Florida court and ask a judge for an injunction ordering removal. The financial penalties attach to noncompliance with that court order, not to missing the initial 10-day window.
For a site that refuses to remove a photo, a court can impose a civil penalty of $1,000 per day for every day the site violates the injunction.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs
Republishing is treated more harshly. If a site takes the photo down after your request and later puts it back up, the court can impose $5,000 per day for noncompliance with an injunction against the republication.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs
In either scenario, the court must award you reasonable attorney fees and court costs for obtaining and enforcing the injunction.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs Mandatory fee shifting means you are not funding the lawsuit out of pocket if you win, which is what makes the enforcement mechanism practical for ordinary people.
Also an Unfair Trade Practice
A refusal to remove, or a republication of a photo that was previously removed, also counts as an unfair or deceptive trade practice under Part II of Chapter 501 of the Florida Statutes.1Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs That opens a second enforcement track under Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, which carries its own remedies and lets the state attorney general act against repeat offenders.
Publishers the Law Does Not Reach
Section 901.43 is aimed at commercial mugshot sites, not every place a booking photo might appear. Subsection (5) exempts legitimate news organizations reporting on arrests, law enforcement agencies publishing booking photos as part of their official functions, and government entities that maintain public records. If your photo shows up on a local news site or a sheriff’s office page, the removal right under this statute does not apply to those sources. You may still find your photo on both a commercial aggregator and a news outlet; the statute gives you a tool against the aggregator only.
Clearing Cached Results in Search Engines
Getting the photo off the source site is only part of the job. Cached versions of the page often stay visible in Google results for weeks after the site takes the photo down. Google has a removal request tool for personal information, and once the source page is gone or updated, you can ask Google to drop the outdated cached version from its index.
If the photo is still live because the site has refused your request, search engine removal is harder, because Google generally will not remove content that still exists on the source page. The realistic path in that case is to pursue the 901.43 injunction first, get the photo taken down at the source, and then follow up with search engines to clear what remains in the index. Keep every registered mail receipt, every piece of correspondence, and every court filing along the way; those are the documents you will need if enforcement moves into litigation.