Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet on Tuesday designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and two other organizations as domestic terrorist groups.
They also added more than 90 federally designated foreign terrorist organizations to the state list.
The designations came months after DeSantis’ initial attempt to implement a new state law was challenged in state court, in part because regulations required to make such a designation had not been implemented yet.
CAIR has labeled itself the most prominent civil rights organization for the Muslim community in the United States since its founding in 1994. It has more than 25 chapters around the country, including in Tampa and Sunrise, in Broward County.
DeSantis originally designated the group as a terrorist organization through an executive order in December. That order called upon the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) to “undertake all lawful measures to prevent unlawful activities” by those groups (which included the Muslim Brotherhood).
READ MORE: Florida Cabinet approves process to designate CAIR and others as domestic terrorist groups
The order requires executive agencies to prevent “any person known to have provided material support or resources to such organization” from receiving “any contract, employment, funds or other benefit or privilege” from “any state executive agency, any state entity regulated by such agency, or any county or municipality in the state.”
CAIR Florida immediately went to federal court and persuaded a judge to issue a temporary injunction blocking the designation, citing First Amendment concerns.
DeSantis then went the legislative route, and the Legislature passed a bill (HB 1471) in February, which the governor signed into law, allowing the state’s head of domestic security (defined as the leader of the FDLE) to make recommendations to the governor and Cabinet about groups considered to be domestic or foreign terrorist organizations.
The law went to go into effect on July 1. On that day, the governor and then-FDLE Commissioner Mark Glass held a news conference in Tampa to announce that he had recommended that CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Antifa be classified as domestic terrorist groups. Hours later, CAIR and CAIR-Florida sued DeSantis and other officials in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida, seeking a declaration that the designation was unconstitutional.
According to documents presented Tuesday to the governor and the three members of the Cabinet, the FDLE cited CAIR’s identification in the 2008 Holy Land Foundational trial in Texas as one of the U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee’s (PALCOM) “organizational structures designed around PALCOM’s goals.”
As has been well documented, CAIR was listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation (HLF) for Relief & Development case in 2007 (along with more than 200 other groups). That listing lost the organization credibility and support in certain circles. Nearly two decades later, it remains the top talking point when critics such as DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott attack CAIR (Texas similarly designated CAIR a domestic terrorist group in 2025).
The documents presented to the governor and Cabinet note that CAIR’s founding members “have connections with Hamas leadership to include Mousa Mohammed Abu Marzook, considered to a co-founder of Hamas. They assert that co-founding CAIR-Texas member Ghassan Elashi, who was convicted of dealings and material support to specially designated terrorists, “also has ties to Hamas.”
The documents say that “current CAIR members have connections with an alleged member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
They also note that the United Arab Emirates in 2014 declared CAIR a terrorist organization due to alleged ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and concerns about promoting extremism. The report says that the UAE upheld that designation when challenged due to CAIR’s honoring of former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian, convicted in 2005 in a U.S. court of conspiracy to make or receive contributions of funds, goods, or services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization.
Rebuttal
The Cabinet materials include a rebuttal of the designation by Jason Blazakis, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who before that worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations, including more than a decade at the Counterterrorism Bureau at the U.S. Department of State.
He writes that DeSantis’ executive order designating CAIR as a terrorist organization “lacks any of the criteria or procedural protections required for a sound, credible, and lawful terrorism designation.” He argues the evidence DeSantis relied upon “is grossly insufficient” to justify that designation.
He also notes that despite “the longstanding public availability of the materials the Governor cites, and many similar materials, the federal government never designated CAIR or any of its chapters as a terrorist entity under either the FTO (Foreign Terrorist Organization) or the SDGT (Specially Designated Global Terrorist) regimes.”
“Based on my review, it seems that the Governor has not assembled an administrative record before designating CAIR,” Blazakis writes.
“The Governor has not conducted an interagency process, with officials possessing relevant expertise, before labeling CAIR a terrorist entity. The Governor did not provide CAIR with notice of the basis for the action or an opportunity to respond before the designation issued. The Governor has relied on materials — interpretive scholarship, stale reporting, and outputs from sources whose independence is in serious question — which would not satisfy the evidentiary requirements of a federal administrative record. The Governor’s own ongoing discovery demands in this litigation confirm that the evidentiary record the state now seeks to assemble was not in hand at the moment the Governor branded CAIR a terrorist organization.”
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