Florida Gov. DeSantis designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood 'foreign terrorist organizations,' barring state contracts and funds

On December 8, 2025, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Brotherhood as "foreign terrorist organizations," instructing state agencies to deny contracts, employment, funds, and other material support to the two organizations and to anyone providing them support. The order asserted the Muslim Brotherhood "has developed into a transnational network with a long history of engaging in or supporting violence" and linked CAIR to it by noting CAIR had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism-financing case; CAIR, which has more than 20 chapters nationwide and is not on the federal government's list of terrorist organizations, called the designation defamatory and sued within days, alleging the order was unconstitutional and that DeSantis had usurped the federal government's exclusive authority to designate terrorist organizations. DeSantis said the lawsuit was "very much welcome" because it would give the state discovery rights to CAIR's bank records.

Updates

2026-03-04 — Federal judge preliminarily enjoined enforcement of the order [2]

U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the December 2025 executive order while CAIR's lawsuit proceeds, writing that the First Amendment "bars the governor from continuing the troubling trend of using an executive office to make a political statement at the expense of others' constitutional rights." Walker framed the question before the court as whether a governor could unilaterally designate a major Muslim civil rights group a "terrorist organization" and withhold government benefits from anyone supporting it. CAIR's lawsuit alleged DeSantis targeted the group in part over its defense of the free-speech rights of people who had expressed support for Palestinian human rights.