(03/11/2026) The domestic terrorist designation bill that is about to become law in Florida was not written by the lawmakers who sponsored it. It was written inside the governor’s office.

A Tampa Bay Times investigation, based on emails obtained through a public records request, has uncovered that DeSantis’s deputy legislative affairs director, Chad Kunde, delivered an original draft of SB 1632 to Sen. Erin Grall, a Vero Beach Republican, on November 20, 2025. According to the Times, file metadata confirmed the document was produced by staff in DeSantis’s Office of Policy and Budget.

That was eighteen days before DeSantis publicly issued his executive order on December 8 designating CAIR as a terrorist organization and calling on lawmakers to codify it into law.

The timeline is revealing. When DeSantis stood before cameras in December and called on the legislature to act, the bill was already written. His own staff had authored it.

The legislation follows years of efforts by DeSantis to suppress pro-Palestinian speech on Florida’s public university campuses. In 2023, he ordered the removal of two chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine after the head of the state university system accused the groups of illegally supporting terrorists. The original draft of SB 1632, with its enhanced criminal penalties for campus protesters, fits squarely within that pattern: a governor who has treated criticism of Israel as a threat to be neutralized through state power, now building the legal machinery to do it.

Related Reading

United Voices Policy Brief: Why Florida Should Reject the ‘Domestic Terrorist’ Designation Bills

What DeSantis’s Draft Included, and What It Didn’t

According to the Times, the governor’s original draft gave his administration the authority, through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, to label organizations as “domestic terrorist organizations.” That core power remains in the bill today, though the current version requires those designations to also be approved by the Cabinet.

The Times reported that the governor’s draft also went further than the current bill in one significant way: it proposed escalating criminal penalties against protesters. Under the original language, a pro-Palestinian protester arrested for disobeying a lawful order, ordinarily a second-degree misdemeanor, would have faced a first-degree misdemeanor instead, carrying up to a year in jail. A protester charged with resisting an officer without violence, already a first-degree misdemeanor, would have faced a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Those provisions were eventually dropped.

What the governor’s draft did not include, according to the investigation, were the provisions that have drawn the sharpest criticism: the automatic expulsion of college students who “support” designated organizations, and the ban on Shari’a law in Florida courts. Those were added later by Grall and Rep. Hillary Cassel, who sponsors the House companion bill, HB 1471.

The Governor’s Office Responds. The Sponsors Stay Quiet.

Grall told the Tampa Bay Times that the governor’s office “provided feedback on the language in the bill” and that the final version reflected committee input and her work with Cassel. Cassel did not respond to the paper’s request for comment.

DeSantis spokesperson Gatlin Nennstiel did not address questions about the bill’s free speech implications, saying only that the legislation is “part of Governor DeSantis’ ongoing effort to keep Florida free and safe.” He pointed to the December executive order.

That executive order was blocked by a federal judge on March 4. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled it violated the First Amendment, calling it unconstitutional coercion from a “bully pulpit” and writing that “bigotry” could claim “no sanction” under the Constitution.

Civil Liberties Groups Call It Unconstitutional

The ACLU of Florida has called HB 1471 “a serious threat to Floridians’ constitutional rights, including the freedoms of speech and belief, freedom of association, and due process.” Kara Gross, the organization’s Interim Political Director, warned in February that officials could use the legislation to target organizations with the stigma of a “domestic terrorist” designation “without clear standards or adequate due process protections.” The ACLU called the bill “simply unnecessary because Florida already has all the tools it needs to investigate and prosecute any actual criminal wrongdoing.”

On the Senate floor last week, Grall attempted to narrow the expulsion trigger by specifying that a student would need to voice support for a designated organization’s “extralegal violence.” Civil liberties experts say the change still targets constitutionally protected speech.

What This Means

The Tampa Bay Times investigation confirms what the legislative record had already suggested: this bill was driven from the top. DeSantis’s office produced the framework, delivered it to a friendly sponsor, and then issued a public executive order calling on lawmakers to do what his staff had already set in motion.

Grall in the Senate and Cassel in the House expanded the bill’s reach by adding the Shari’a ban and the student expulsion provisions. The result is a bill that combines the governor’s designation powers with enforcement mechanisms that go beyond what even his office originally proposed.

Despite massive resistance from civil rights organizations, free speech advocates, legal scholars, and community groups, and despite a federal court ruling that the executive order behind the bill is unconstitutional, Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature has pushed the legislation forward. With few exceptions, Republican lawmakers closed ranks behind the bills. A handful of Democrats voted in favor as well.

From ordering the removal of Students for Justice in Palestine chapters in 2023, to designating CAIR as a terrorist organization by executive order, to personally authoring the draft legislation now one vote from becoming law: the record shows a governor who has systematically used the power of his office to silence pro-Palestinian voices and punish criticism of Israel in Florida.

The Senate passed SB 1632 with amendments on March 5. It returns to the House for a final concurrence vote before the session ends on March 13.

This article is based on investigative reporting by Lawrence Mower of the Tampa Bay Times. Read the full investigation here.