The Designation Fight Goes Sub-National — and Runs Straight Into the First Amendment
Florida tried to become the first US state to brand the Brotherhood, CAIR and Antifa terrorist. A federal judge has now halted it twice — exposing the structural limit the federal, foreign-facing designations sidestep.
On July 1 Governor Ron DeSantis announced FDLE's recommendation to designate CAIR, CAIR-Florida, the Muslim Brotherhood and Antifa under HB 1471, the state terror-designation law he signed in April. The ACLU sued on CAIR's behalf in the Northern District of Florida on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds. On July 14 state attorneys told the court FDLE would write implementing regulations first and make "no designation before the regulations are finalized" — with no timeline — and both sides were ordered back before Judge Mark Walker on July 22. Walker had already blocked DeSantis's earlier executive-order version in a March injunction over "material support" to CAIR.
Assessment: This is the designation campaign migrating from the federal FTO and SDGT lists under EO 14362 down to a state apparatus with its own criteria — a parallel track that, if upheld, lets a governor sanction a US advocacy NGO by tying it rhetorically to the Brotherhood. The repeated judicial pauses mark the structural weak point: domestic designation of an ideological network keeps colliding with First Amendment limits that the foreign-facing federal designations avoid. Three named, zero in force, twice halted — the method, not the target, is the story.