Texas and Florida turn the Brotherhood designation into litigation American judges must now rule on
Ken Paxton’s Collin County suit names five defendants and sued local CAIR chapters his own office had earlier argued were outside the state’s designation. In Florida, the ACLU is asking a court to stop a designation before it bites.
Governor Greg Abbott issued a proclamation on 18 November 2025 declaring the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations “foreign terrorist organizations” and “transnational criminal organizations.” Seventy-nine days later, on 5 February 2026, Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit in district court in Collin County against five defendants — the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR nationally, and CAIR’s Austin, Houston and Dallas–Fort Worth chapters — seeking to bar them from operating, owning property, fundraising or recruiting in Texas. The complaint refers to each CAIR entity as “a chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood.” Houston Public Media reported the detail that matters most: Paxton’s office had previously argued, in separate litigation, that the local Texas chapters were not covered by Abbott’s designation, and then sued them. That is a documented reversal by the same office, and a court may eventually make it choose.
In Florida, the direction is inverted. On 2 July 2026 Muslim civil-rights nonprofits, backed by the ACLU and the ACLU of Florida, sued state officials including Governor Ron DeSantis to block a “domestic terrorist” designation, arguing it threatens the organisations' existence in the state. The filing was reported by Bloomberg Law and the Washington Times. Neither docket has produced a retrievable ruling: the Texas case has been pending roughly six months without one, and no hearing date has surfaced in the Florida matter. A preliminary injunction in Florida would be the first judicial test of a US sub-federal terrorist designation aimed at Muslim organisations — a test the federal designations, sitting in executive authority, have so far avoided.
Assessment: The federal track and the state track are doing different work. Washington’s listings target foreign chapters and financiers, where judicial review is thin by design. Texas and Florida are pointing the same vocabulary at domestic advocacy groups, where the First Amendment is in the room and someone eventually has to prove the chapter claim. That is why the Paxton reversal is the reportable fact rather than the rhetoric around it: an office that argued both sides of the coverage question within months has told a judge, on the record, that the designation’s scope is arguable. Note also what is absent — four Brotherhood designation bills sit in the 119th Congress, and the executive has already acted twice without them.