By Jeffrey T. Donner, Esq.

August 3, 2026

A signature traditionally marked a deliberate legal act. A person was presented with a document, had an opportunity to examine it, and physically placed a name or identifying mark beneath its terms to demonstrate assent.

Modern electronic-signature laws changed that understanding. Under current federal and Florida law, clicking a button, typing a name, or completing another electronic process may carry the same legal effect as signing a paper document by hand.

Current law gives certain electronic acts the legal effect of signatures. That does not make a click and a handwritten signature the same act. It means lawmakers chose to treat them as legally equivalent. This article argues that the policy choice should be narrowed when consumers reject important protections or surrender substantial rights.

Electronic signatures have made transactions faster and less expensive. They have also made it extraordinarily easy for businesses to obtain purported assent to lengthy, nonnegotiable contracts that consumers may never meaningfully see, consider, or understand.

After more than twenty-five years of experience with electronic contracting, Florida and Congress should reconsider whether every electronic act should carry the same legal consequences as a traditional signature—particularly when consumers reject valuable insurance coverage, waive access to court, release personal-injury claims, or surrender other substantial rights.

This is not an argument that courts should disregard existing law. Courts must apply the statutes enacted by the Legislature and Congress. It is an argument that elected lawmakers should change those statutes.

What Current Law Treats as a Signature

Florida’s Uniform Electronic Transaction Act defines an “electronic signature” as an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign it. The statute provides that a signature may not be denied legal effect merely because it is electronic and that an electronic signature satisfies a legal signature requirement. § 668.50(2)(h), (7), Fla. Stat.

Federal law establishes a similar rule. The Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, commonly known as the E-SIGN Act, generally provides that a signature, contract, or record affecting interstate or foreign commerce may not be denied legal effect solely because it is electronic. 15 U.S.C. § 7001.

Congress also substantially restricted the ability of individual states to depart from that rule. A state may modify or supersede the federal standard only within the limitations imposed by 15 U.S.C. § 7002.

Accordingly, Florida probably cannot enact a universal law declaring all electronic signatures invalid. A serious reform proposal must address both state and federal law.

Florida should enact the strongest protections that existing federal law permits. Congress should amend the E-SIGN Act to allow states to require handwritten signatures for defined categories of high-stakes consumer transactions.

Electronic Contracting Was a Deliberate Pro-Commerce Policy Choice

The expansion of electronic signatures did not result from the inevitable meaning of the word “signature.” It resulted from a legislative policy choice.

Federal and state lawmakers concluded that traditional signature requirements impeded electronic commerce. They therefore adopted technology-neutral definitions broad enough to treat an electronic process as a legally effective signature.

That choice produced substantial benefits. Consumers can purchase products, obtain services, open accounts, and conduct business remotely. Companies—including small businesses—can reduce printing, mailing, storage, and administrative expenses. Electronic systems can also create useful records concerning timing, identity verification, and document integrity.

But legislation should be reassessed when experience reveals significant unintended consequences.

The same laws that facilitated legitimate electronic commerce also made it easier for companies to impose contracts of adhesion at enormous scale. A business can present standardized terms to thousands or millions of consumers, obtain purported acceptance almost instantly, preserve an audit trail generated by its own system, and later rely on that record as proof that the consumer knowingly accepted every provision.

The question is not whether electronic commerce should continue. It should.

The question is whether transactional efficiency should remain the controlling value when a consumer is surrendering an important right or rejecting valuable protection.

A Click and a Traditional Signature Are Not Functionally Identical

A handwritten signature does not prove that someone read or understood every word of a document. People signed contracts without reading them long before computers and smartphones existed.

Nevertheless, traditional execution imposes a degree of formality. A paper document has a visible physical length. The signer ordinarily encounters a signature line placed beneath or at the end of the document. The signer must physically place a name or identifying mark on it.

That process communicates that a legally consequential act is occurring.

Electronic transactions frequently remove that formality.

A consumer may complete a transaction on a telephone screen only a few inches wide. Important terms may appear behind hyperlinks, expandable menus, separate screens, or downloadable documents that are available in a technical sense but are not prominently presented during the transaction.

The operative button may say “Continue,” “Confirm,” “Complete,” or “Accept.” One electronic act may simultaneously complete the desired transaction and purportedly establish assent to numerous collateral terms.

The company’s software then creates a record containing a typed name, timestamp, device information, Internet address, and other audit data. That evidence may reliably establish that a user interacted with the system. It does not necessarily establish that a particular provision was conspicuously presented, understood, or intentionally accepted.

Legal validity, attribution, and informed assent are related concepts, but they are not identical.

Scrolling Is Not Reading

Some electronic systems require users to scroll through text before an acceptance button becomes active. That procedure provides evidence that the document moved across the user’s screen. It does not establish that the user read or understood it.

The distinction matters.

A technological system can measure whether a user reached the bottom of a document. It ordinarily cannot determine whether the user carefully reviewed the language, understood its legal effect, or recognized that a particular right was being relinquished.

The law should not treat technological completion requirements as conclusive proof of informed consent.

That does not mean electronic agreements should ordinarily be unenforceable. It means greater safeguards should apply when the disputed provision involves a substantial waiver or rejection.

Contracts of Adhesion Have Spread Into Routine Activities

Electronic contracting has allowed liability waivers and other standardized agreements to become common in ordinary recreational and consumer activities.

A customer may encounter a lengthy waiver before bowling, playing miniature golf, renting recreational equipment, visiting an attraction, attending an event, or enrolling a child in an activity. The agreement may address personal injury, arbitration, use of photographs, indemnity, class-action rights, or risks far beyond the immediate commercial transaction.

The customer ordinarily cannot negotiate the terms. The practical choices are to accept the agreement or decline the activity.

Contracts of adhesion are not inherently invalid. Modern commerce could not function if every standardized term had to be individually negotiated. But the absence of negotiation makes meaningful disclosure and deliberate assent more—not less—important.

The ease of collecting electronic acceptance has encouraged businesses to place increasingly broad legal provisions into transactions that consumers experience as routine purchases or recreational activities.

Lawmakers should ask whether current doctrine properly balances commercial convenience against genuine consent.

Insurance Transactions Present a Particularly Serious Concern

The problem is especially significant in insurance.

An insurance application determines which people, vehicles, properties, and risks are covered. It may also determine which coverages are rejected, reduced, or omitted.

A consumer insuring several automobiles may choose different coverages for different vehicles. On a small screen, it may be difficult to determine whether a selection applies to one vehicle or the entire policy. A default or unchecked box may produce a substantial gap in coverage even though the consumer never consciously decided to create that gap.

After a loss, the evidentiary positions of the parties are unequal.

The insurer possesses the application platform, screen sequence, programming, default settings, data fields, audit history, metadata, completed application, and policy records. The consumer may have only a general memory of navigating the transaction months or years earlier.

The insurer designed the process. It selected the language and visual presentation. It controlled the software. It retained the resulting data. It then interprets that data when deciding whether to pay the claim.

For a significant rejection of insurance coverage, proof that a consumer completed an electronic application should not necessarily end the inquiry.

Florida Should Require Meaningful, Coverage-Specific Consent

Florida should enact heightened requirements for electronic rejection or removal of material insurance coverage.

At a minimum, the law should require:

1. A separate and conspicuous disclosure whenever collision, comprehensive, uninsured-motorist, or another significant coverage is rejected or removed.
2. Identification of the specific vehicle, person, property, or risk to which the rejection applies.
3. A plain-language explanation of the financial consequence of the rejection.
4. A separate affirmative act confirming each material rejection, rather than reliance on an unchecked box or general acceptance of the entire application.
5. A prohibition against preselected defaults that operate to reject or remove material coverage.
6. A final summary showing, in one place, the material coverages selected and rejected for each insured vehicle or risk.
7. Immediate delivery of the completed application, declarations, policy, and coverage-rejection disclosures in a form the consumer can download, print, and retain.
8. Preservation of the actual interface, wording, screen sequence, software version, and display presented during the transaction.
9. A meaningful opportunity to correct errors before the transaction becomes final.
10. A rebuttable presumption against knowing rejection when the insurer cannot prove compliance with these safeguards.

Florida law already contains principles that support greater protection. The Uniform Electronic Transaction Act applies only when the parties have agreed to conduct a transaction electronically, with that agreement determined from the context and surrounding circumstances. The attribution and effect of an electronic signature also depend on context and surrounding circumstances. § 668.50(5), (9), Fla. Stat.

The statute further requires certain electronic records to be capable of retention by the recipient and provides limited protection for individual errors in automated transactions when the system offers no opportunity for prevention or correction. § 668.50(8), (10), Fla. Stat.

The Legislature should build upon those principles rather than treating electronic completion as effectively conclusive.

Florida Should Consider a Wet-Signature Requirement for Certain Transactions

For narrowly defined, consequential transactions, Florida should be permitted to require an actual handwritten signature on a clear disclosure.

A wet-signature requirement would not guarantee that a consumer read or understood every term. No execution procedure can provide that guarantee.

It would, however, restore formality and deliberative friction. It would require the business to isolate the consequential decision and present it as an independent legal act.

For example, the rejection of automobile collision coverage could require a separate disclosure stating:

“You are purchasing no collision coverage for the vehicle identified below. If that vehicle is damaged in a collision, your insurer will not pay to repair or replace it.”

The disclosure should identify the vehicle by year, make, model, and vehicle identification number. The applicant should separately sign beneath that language.

The same principle could apply to other narrowly identified transactions in which consumers surrender substantial rights, including certain arbitration agreements, class-action waivers, releases of future personal-injury claims, and authorizations for commercial use of a minor’s identity or image.

The categories should be carefully defined. The purpose should not be to abolish electronic commerce but to distinguish routine transactions from legally consequential waivers.

Congress Must Amend the E-SIGN Act

Florida cannot fully implement this proposal without federal action.

The E-SIGN Act generally prevents states from denying legal effect to a transaction solely because an electronic signature or record was used. It also restricts state laws that depart from the federal standard.

Congress should amend 15 U.S.C. §§ 7001 and 7002 to permit states to require handwritten signatures for specifically defined categories of high-stakes consumer transactions.

Federal law already recognizes that electronic contracting should not govern every legal act without exception. The E-SIGN Act contains specific exclusions and preserves special treatment for certain categories of records and notices. See 15 U.S.C. § 7003.

Congress should expand that principle by allowing states to determine that designated consumer waivers and coverage rejections require greater formality.

Such an amendment would not compel every state to require wet signatures. It would restore state authority to make that policy judgment.

Florida could then decide, through its elected Legislature and Governor, which transactions justify the requirement.

This Is a Conservative Argument for Genuine Freedom of Contract

Electronic-signature laws are commonly defended as promoting freedom of contract and reducing government interference with commerce.

But freedom of contract requires an actual agreement. It should not be reduced to automatic enforcement of whatever terms the more powerful party places behind an electronic button.

In a genuine negotiation, both parties help shape the agreement. In a consumer contract of adhesion, one party drafts every term, designs the method of presentation, controls the technology, and preserves the evidence later offered to prove assent.

A conservative legal system should enforce voluntary agreements. It should also distinguish voluntary agreement from procedural compliance engineered by one side of the transaction.

This is not a request for courts to invent new exceptions or disregard enacted law. Questions about the appropriate formalities for consumer contracts belong primarily to the legislative branch.

Congress made a policy choice when it enacted E-SIGN. The Florida Legislature made a policy choice when it enacted Florida’s electronic-transaction laws. Those choices can be reconsidered through the same constitutional process.

Convenience Should Not Replace Consent

Electronic signatures have legitimate and valuable uses. They should remain available for ordinary transactions in which speed, convenience, and remote access benefit both parties.

But the law should not assume that every electronic action provides the same evidence of deliberate assent as a separately executed acknowledgment of a consequential decision.

A click may prove that a consumer interacted with a system.

It may prove that the consumer wanted to proceed with a transaction.

It may even prove, depending on the circumstances, an intent to sign a particular record.

It should not automatically establish that the consumer knowingly rejected valuable insurance coverage, surrendered access to court, released a serious legal claim, or waived another substantial right.

Florida should enact the strongest meaningful-consent requirements permitted under present federal law. Congress should amend the E-SIGN Act so states may require handwritten signatures for carefully defined, high-stakes consumer transactions.

Technology should facilitate agreements.

It should not manufacture them.