CAIR shuts down in Florida after court upholds DeSantis terror designation

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has suspended all operations in Florida after a federal judge upheld the DeSantis administration's designation of the group, and its state chapter, as domestic terrorist organizations. Judge Allen C. Winsor of the Northern District of Florida denied CAIR's emergency request to block the designation, finding the plaintiffs unlikely to succeed at this stage on claims that designations under a new state law, HB 1471, violate due process and First Amendment rights.

The designation took effect Thursday. Both organizations say it forced the shutdown of their advocacy and legal work in Florida. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the ruling on X, crediting his Solicitor General's office; Governor Ron DeSantis posted "Results."

CAIR was designated in September alongside Antifa and the Muslim Brotherhood. Its challenge is being litigated by the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Ashley Gorski, senior counsel with the ACLU's National Security Project, called the decision one upholding "state officials' sweeping power to punish American organizations they brand as 'terrorist,' without due process and in violation of the First Amendment."

The structural question is the one the ACLU names: no federal process, no evidentiary finding by a court, and no listed criteria determined the outcome — a governor's designation, a single statute, and a judge declining to pause it while litigation continues. Winsor's narrow carve-out illustrates how blunt the instrument is: Florida prosecutors cannot enforce the law against CAIR with respect to providing legal services to the groups, but the designation itself stands.

The template does not expire with CAIR. A state law that lets a governor brand a domestic organization terrorist, with penalties that follow, can be aimed at any association a future administration dislikes — a gun club, a pro-life network, a union. The ACLU is appealing.

Meanwhile, Florida's governor has a working precedent and an attorney general advertising it.