Federal judge declines to halt Florida’s terror designation of CAIR before November deadline

On 29 September the Florida Cabinet, acting on a motion from Governor Ron DeSantis and a recommendation from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, approved designations of CAIR, CAIR-Florida, the Muslim Brotherhood and Antifa as terrorist organisations under state law, alongside more than 90 bodies already designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations by the federal government, among them the IRGC and several named cartels. The authority is HB 1471, in effect since 1 July 2026, which created a formal state designation process; designations carry the force of state law 30 days after publication, making 5 November 2026 the operative date. On 1 October CAIR Foundation Inc. and CAIR Florida Inc. sued DeSantis and other state officials in federal court, represented by the ACLU, the ACLU of Florida, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Akeel & Valentine PLC and Bondurant Mixson & Ellmore LLP, alleging First and Fourteenth Amendment violations and conflict with federal law.

Plaintiffs moved for emergency relief on 2 October. On 13 October a federal judge denied that request. That denial reached this desk through a single JNS-originated item carried by Heritage Florida Jewish News on 16 October; the judge’s name, the district, and whether the ruling disposed of a temporary restraining order or a full preliminary-injunction motion are not established, and the designations themselves — unlike the denial — are confirmed across Florida Politics, the Florida Phoenix, WLRN and the Governor’s own office. Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a September release issued after CAIR was refused an opportunity to address the Cabinet before the vote that “there are simply no legitimate grounds to brand our clients with a reviled label, impose crippling criminal penalties, and force them to shut their doors in Florida,” calling the action “baseless and unconstitutional.”

Assessment: The procedural history is the story. DeSantis designated CAIR and the Brotherhood by executive order in December 2025 and a federal judge blocked it; Florida then legislated the power it had been denied. HB 1471 is the lesson learned — a statute with a published list and a 30-day clock is harder to enjoin than a governor’s signature, and the 13 October denial, whatever its precise form, suggests the second route is holding where the first did not. Two cautions. One ruling on emergency relief is not a merits judgment. And the denial remains thinly sourced; until the docket is pulled, treat the designations' 5 November effective date as the confirmed fact and the court’s posture as provisional.