CAIR shuts its Florida offices after a judge declines to block a state terrorism label

A federal judge denied a request from the Council on American-Islamic Relations and its Florida chapter to avoid being labelled a “domestic terrorist” organisation under a new state law, and the organisation closed its Florida office last Friday after the designation took effect on 6 November. The case was before the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida. The law was signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in April and backed an executive order designating CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood; others named include Tren de Aragua, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Antifa. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier wrote on X: “This morning, a federal court upheld Florida’s Domestic Terrorist Organization law and rejected CAIR’s attempt to stop the designations.” Reporting on the ruling’s date conflicts — Religion News Service and Central Florida Public Media place it on Wednesday evening, the Daily Signal on Thursday morning. It was reported on 5 November.

Hiba Rahim, CAIR-Florida’s executive director, said the chapter “categorically rejects Florida officials' baseless designation of us,” and that DeSantis and other officials had “unilaterally” branded Muslim nonprofits as “terrorist” with devastating consequences. CAIR’s website now carries a single item noting that “the ACLU, SPLC, and their partners are representing us in a federal lawsuit challenging this designation on First Amendment and due process grounds.” Ashley Gorski, senior counsel at the ACLU, said the organisation plans to appeal. One correction is worth making explicitly: ClickOrlando reported that “both CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood were deemed to be foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).” A US state cannot designate an FTO — that power sits with the federal government under the Immigration and Nationality Act. Florida’s instrument is a state-level domestic terrorist label.

Assessment: The FTO conflation is not a copy error, it is the argument. A state label carries no federal criminal weight, but if the public reads it as an FTO designation it inherits the stigma and the chilling effect of one — and the chilling effect is what closed the office, not a court order to close it. Note the asymmetry with Cairo: Egypt’s permanent listing came by gazette notice with no adversarial process, Florida’s survived one round in federal court and faces appeal. Both rest on the same scaffolding, Executive Order 14362 of 24 November 2025 and the January chapter designations. The federal track is what makes subnational and foreign measures legible to each other.