(02/27/2026) In the 48 hours after Florida’s domestic terrorist designation bill barely survived its Senate committee hearing and was pulled from its next one, two responses emerged that together reveal everything about what this legislation is designed to do — and to whom.

The ACLU of Florida condemned the committee passage of SB 1632, calling it a “political repression bill” that threatens constitutional safeguards. Kara Gross, the organization’s Interim Political Director, warned that the bill’s vague and overbroad language “could easily be weaponized in bad faith against everyday Floridians exercising their First Amendment rights.” Her message was blunt: “Regardless of your party affiliation or religious beliefs, if this bill continues to advance, all of our rights could be put at risk.”

The ACLU’s warning echoed what the SPLC’s Florida policy director, Jonathan Webber, told lawmakers during the Senate hearing: the bill allows an organization to be branded a domestic terrorist “without any prior criminal conviction of the group, its leaders or its members. That is punishment before due process.”

But while civil liberties groups sounded the alarm, another organization was quietly celebrating. The Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement confirming that both SB 1632 and its House companion, HB 1471, had been amended to address their concerns. The amendments clarified that the bill’s prohibition on religious law “does not apply to the governance, administration, or adjudication of ecclesiastical matters of a religious organization” — including the selection, appointment, and discipline of clergy, and the application of Canon Law.

The Catholic Church’s legal system was protected. Islam’s was not.

The carve-out is worth examining closely. The bill’s sponsors have insisted from the beginning that the religious law provisions are about preventing any foreign legal system from being enforced in Florida courts — not about targeting one religion. But when the Catholic Bishops raised concerns that Canon Law could be swept up in the bill’s broad language, the sponsors moved to create an exemption. When Muslim community leaders raised concerns that Shari’a — which, like Canon Law, governs internal religious matters including family law, inheritance, and religious obligations — would be targeted, the bill’s sponsors did the opposite: they named Shari’a explicitly.

Canon Law gets an exemption. Shari’a gets named by name in a bill titled “Ideologies Inconsistent with American Principles.” The bill doesn’t say “religious law inconsistent with American principles.” It says Shari’a.

This is the same pattern that has defined the entire legislative campaign. When Florida’s $3 billion voucher program was scrutinized, it was the roughly two dozen Islamic schools — not the thousands of Christian campuses — that were singled out. When DeSantis issued his executive order designating CAIR as a terrorist organization, neither CAIR nor the Muslim Brotherhood — the two organizations named — carries a federal terrorism designation. The legal infrastructure is built to look neutral on paper while targeting one community in practice.

The Bishops’ statement confirmed that both bills “have cleared all committees of reference and are available for consideration on the floor of their respective chambers.” HB 1471 is expected on the House floor next week. SB 1632 has been pulled from its final committee and is headed straight to the Senate floor.

The ACLU is right: everyone’s rights are at risk. But the bill’s own amendment history makes clear whose rights are at risk first.