(03/03/2026) The Florida House of Representatives voted 81-26 on Tuesday to pass HB 1471, the bill that would create a state-level system for designating organizations as domestic terrorists — with all the criminal penalties, campus expulsions, voucher restrictions, and public funding cutoffs that label carries. Every Republican in the chamber voted yes. The bill now heads to the Senate, where its companion, SB 1632, is expected to be voted on later this week. If approved, the legislation goes to Governor DeSantis’s desk.

Rep. Hillary Cassel, R-Dania Beach, opened her floor speech with a telling choice. “It should not be lost on any of us that approximately 72 hours ago, America and our ally Israel engaged Iran,” she told the chamber, “a regime that since the 1979 revolution, replaced constitutional governance with theocratic rule under Shari’a law, curtailed the rights of women, crushed dissent and exported terrorism across the globe.”

The Iran strikes had nothing to do with HB 1471. They had nothing to do with Florida. But Cassel — the former Democrat who switched parties over Israel, who filed her first anti-Shari’a bill on the anniversary of October 7, and who replaced that bill with HB 1471 on the same day DeSantis called for it — used a foreign military operation to frame a domestic law aimed at Florida’s Muslim communities. The connection she was drawing was not subtle: Islam, Iran, terrorism, Shari’a — all one threat, all requiring the same response.

“This bill confronts a reality that cannot be ignored,” Cassel continued. “Terrorism does not become less dangerous because it is homegrown. Nations do not collapse only from invasion, they can unravel from complacency.”

Democrats pushed back hard on the House floor. Rep. Rita Harris, D-Orlando, called the bill “an extraordinary concentration of power” in the hands of a few officials. “There is no requirement for legislative approval,” she said. “There is no independent judicial finding before the designation takes effect. There is no built-in meaningful oversight mechanism to ensure transparency or review.”

Rep. Ashley Gantt, D-Miami, proposed an amendment to remove all references to Shari’a law from the bill, calling the language “unconstitutional” and arguing it would “ensure no one religion is singled out or antagonized.” The House rejected the amendment. Cassel claimed Shari’a law was named for “clarity, not preference” and called it “a foreign framework that is codified and enforced by certain governments. It is not a religious practice.” That characterization would come as a surprise to the world’s nearly two billion Muslims, for whom Shari’a — literally meaning “the path” or “the way” — encompasses guidance on prayer, charity, fasting, family life, and ethical conduct. It is, by definition, a religious practice.

Rep. Anna Eskamani, D-Orlando, brought the debate back to the human cost. According to reporting by the Orlando Sentinel, about two dozen Islamic schools across Florida serve roughly 6,000 students and receive approximately $46 million through the state’s voucher program. Under HB 1471, any school affiliated with a designated organization could be cut off. “It’s really this concern that because they’re a Muslim school they’re being thrown into this discriminatory environment,” Eskamani said, “and people are making assumptions because their students are wearing a hijab and now they must be dangerous.”

Shortly after HB 1471 passed, the House also approved HB 1473, Cassel’s companion bill that exempts from public record disclosure “certain information” surrounding the domestic terrorist designation process. Together, the two bills create a system where state officials can label organizations as terrorists using a process that is partly secret — and where the designated group can only challenge the label after it has already taken effect.

The ACLU of Florida issued a statement after the vote warning that the law risks “chilling lawful advocacy and civic participation across this state” and urging the Senate to reject the legislation. The organization noted that laws enacted in the name of security “are too often applied in ways that suppress dissent and disproportionately impact Black, brown, Muslim, immigrant, and politically marginalized communities.”

The path from here is short. SB 1632 has already been pulled from its final committee to expedite a floor vote. If the Senate passes it — as expected — the bill goes to DeSantis, who called for this exact legislation in December when he issued his executive order and told lawmakers to put it in law. The CAIR lawsuit challenging that executive order remains pending.

The legislative session ends March 13. What began with Cassel’s self-described act of solidarity with Israel last October is now one Senate vote away from becoming Florida law.