Florida Mugshot Removal Law: Requests, Fees, and Refusals

Under the Florida mugshot removal law, anyone whose booking photo appears on a commercial mugshot website can demand its removal in writing, and the site has 10 calendar days to take the photo down at no charge. The statute is Florida Statute 901.43, originally enacted in 2017 and amended in 2021. It applies whether your case ended in conviction, dismissal, or is still pending.¹

Who Can Request Removal

You do not need to prove your charges were dropped, that you were acquitted, or that your record has been expunged. Florida Statute 901.43 lets any person whose booking photo has been published on a mugshot site request removal, regardless of how the case turned out.¹ An attorney can submit the request for you.

That broad eligibility is what separates removal under 901.43 from expungement. Expungement requires meeting strict criteria about case outcomes and criminal history. Removal is a simpler process with a lower bar: if your booking photo is on a site that publishes arrest photos as a business, you can demand it come down.

How to Send the Removal Request

The statute spells out specific requirements, and cutting corners gives the website an excuse to ignore you. Your written request must include:

Proof of identity sufficient 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.

The registered agent requirement matters. Every business entity registered in Florida has a registered agent on file with the Florida Division of Corporations, and you can look this up through the state’s Sunbiz.org database. A message to a generic customer service email or a website contact form does not satisfy the statute. Registered mail also gives you a verifiable delivery date, which is important because the 10-day clock starts when the site receives your request.¹

Once the site receives a properly formatted request, it has 10 calendar days to remove the photo. After removal, the site is also prohibited from republishing or redisseminating the same photo.¹

No Fees Allowed

The mugshot removal industry was built on charging hundreds of dollars to take down photos the sites themselves had published. Florida Statute 901.43 makes that illegal. Subsection (1) 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.¹ If a site asks you to pay for removal, that request itself violates Florida law.

What Happens if the Site Refuses

If the 10 days pass without removal, you can file a civil lawsuit for an injunction ordering the site to take the photo down. The daily civil penalties do not kick in automatically after the 10-day window closes. You first have to obtain the injunction, and the penalties apply for each day the site defies that court order.

For noncompliance with an injunction to remove the photo, a court can impose a civil penalty of $1,000 per day. For noncompliance with an injunction against republication, the penalty rises to $5,000 per day. The law treats putting a photo back up after removal as a more serious violation because the site has already acknowledged the removal obligation once.¹

In both scenarios, the court must award you reasonable attorney fees and court costs for obtaining and enforcing the injunction. That fee-shifting provision means you do not have to front litigation costs, which removes the financial barrier that keeps many people from enforcing their rights.¹

A refusal to remove or a republication also counts as an unfair or deceptive trade practice under Part II of Chapter 501 of the Florida Statutes. That designation opens a second avenue for enforcement, because Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act carries its own remedies and allows the state attorney general to act against repeat offenders.¹

Keep copies of all correspondence, your registered mail receipt, and any court filings. They become evidence if you need to escalate.

Who the Law Does Not Cover

Florida Statute 901.43 targets commercial mugshot sites, not every publisher of a booking photo. Subsection (5) exempts legitimate news organizations reporting on arrests, law enforcement agencies publishing booking photos as part of their official functions, and government entities maintaining public records. If your photo appears on a local news website or a sheriff’s office page, this statute does not give you the right to demand removal from those sources.

Many people find their booking photos on both commercial sites and news outlets. The statute gives you a clear enforcement tool against the commercial sites but not against journalists or government agencies.

Clearing the Photo From Search Results

Removing the photo from the source site is only half the problem. Cached versions of the page can remain visible in Google and other search engines for weeks or months after the original comes down. Google offers a removal request tool for personal information in search results, and once the page itself has been taken down or updated, you can ask Google to remove the outdated cached version from its index.

For photos that are still live on a site refusing to comply, search engine removal is harder, because Google generally will not remove content that still exists on the source page. The practical path is to pursue the civil injunction under 901.43 first to force the site to take the photo down, then follow up with the search engines to clear what remains in the cache.

1
Online Sunshine. Florida Code 901.43 – Dissemination of Arrest Booking Photographs