A just-passed overhaul of Florida's unemployment laws gives employers the ability to challenge jobless benefits to former employees for behavior that has little to do with how they conduct themselves at work.

The provision permits businesses to fight a worker's benefits claim based on "misconduct, irrespective of whether the misconduct occurs at the workplace or during working hours."

In essence, it allows the business to cite a worker's private behavior as a reason to deny benefits.

For example, owners of a delivery company, who can now fire a driver cited for reckless driving, could also challenge his right to benefits even if the offense occurred while he was driving his own car on his own time.

The ruling on unemployment eligibility would be made by a state referee hearing the employer's challenge.

"The Legislature has just given license for your employer to be Big Brother over your life," said Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida American Civil Liberties Union. "Now they can monitor what you do off-hours and try to deny you unemployment for that behavior."

The language is part of a rewrite of the state's unemployment regulations approved by the Florida Legislature. The bill cuts total weeks of benefits, ties maximum weeks to the state jobless rate and makes it easier for businesses to challenge a worker's benefits claim. Gov. Rick Scott has not yet signed the bill (HB 7005) but has expressed support for it.

The package adds a new degree of leverage to a labor landscape that already favors employers when it comes to hiring and firing.

In Florida, employers can fire employees for virtually any reason. But state law has held that even poorly performing employees are entitled to jobless benefits — up to 26 weeks under the state plan — if they've worked long enough to earn them.

The policy helps workers and props up the economy by providing the unemployed a source of income while they look for new jobs.

Companies can challenge a fired worker's right to benefits, but to be successful they have had to demonstrate that the employee knowingly engaged in serious on-the-job misconduct such as stealing or destroying company property.

The new law would allow employers to object based on "misconduct" in a worker's private life.

Tamela Perdue, general counsel for Associated Florida Industries, said businesses wanted the change to ensure undeserving workers didn't collect benefits. She said the misconduct must be related in some way to the employee's job responsibilities or the organization's goals and values.

An example: Say an organization that promotes sobriety discovers one of its managers goes out some weekends and drinks.

The organization can fire him if it finds that behavior inconsistent with its mission. The unemployment-overhaul bill also allows the group to challenge his jobless benefits because the behavior that got him fired amounts to misconduct.

The new law, Perdue said, allows state referees to "consider the totality of the circumstances" under which someone was let go. It does not identify specific behaviors that constitute misconduct.

Worker advocates say the bill badly tilts the playing field, handing employers a powerful weapon in their efforts to disqualify ex-workers from unemployment.

"This gives incredible control to the employer," said Arthur Rosenberg, an attorney with Florida Legal Services in Miami. "It gives carte blanche to them in a very vague and subjective way."

Employers have a financial incentive to limit the number of employees receiving benefits. Companies pay a tax to finance the state's unemployment trust fund, and the amount they pay is based, in part, on how many former workers have collected from the system.

Reducing the cost of unemployment — which pays a maximum of $275 a week — was a major theme of this year's legislative session. Florida's unemployment trust fund went broke in 2009, and the state has been borrowing federal money to keep payments flowing. It now owes more than $2 billion.

The new misconduct language is part of a larger bill that reduces the maximum number of weeks a person can collect on the state program from 26 weeks to 23 weeks. The bill ties the total number of state weeks to the statewide jobless rate.

As the unemployment rate falls, the maximum number of weeks falls too. At 5 percent unemployment, benefits would be available for only 12 weeks.

The measure also targets laid-off workers getting severance pay. The total number of weeks they can claim will be driven, in part, on the severance deal they get from their employer.

Republican lawmakers lauded the bill, saying it would help make Florida more "business-friendly." State Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Commerce and Tourism, called the measure "a great gift to the business industry," according to the News Service of Florida.

Jack Lord, a management attorney with Foley & Lardner in Orlando, said the provision about off-hours misconduct is "not as sexy as it sounds" because employers already sometimes cite personal behavior in an attempt to deny unemployment benefits to former workers.

Lord said he was more focused on elements in the bill that make it much easier to deny benefits for absenteeism and for a single violation of an employer's rules. Historically, workers win most challenge hearings, but the new language in the overhaul bill could shift that balance.

"There are some very big changes," Lord said.

jstratton@tribune.com or 407-420-5379.