WASHINGTON, D.C. (03/04/2026) — United Voices welcomes today’s federal court ruling granting a preliminary injunction that blocks enforcement of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s executive order designating the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) a “terrorist organization.”

U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker found that the executive order constitutes unconstitutional First Amendment coercion — that the governor used the power of his office to pressure third parties into cutting ties with one of America’s largest Muslim civil rights organizations, suppressing its protected speech. The injunction is effective immediately.

Judge Walker’s ruling affirms what United Voices has documented throughout its reporting on Florida’s escalating campaign against the state’s Muslim communities: the governor’s executive order was never about public safety. In the judge’s own words: “Political grandstanding does not an emergency make.”

This ruling carries immediate implications for the Florida Legislature. Governor DeSantis issued the executive order on December 8, 2025, and within hours called on lawmakers to codify it into law. That call produced HB 1471 and SB 1632 — sweeping bills that would create a state-level domestic terrorist designation system, ban Shari’a law from Florida courts, restrict Islamic schools’ access to voucher funding, and authorize the expulsion of college students who “promote” designated organizations. The House passed HB 1471 yesterday, 81-26. The Senate is expected to vote on SB 1632 this week, before the session ends March 13.

United Voices calls on the Florida Senate to reject SB 1632.

A federal court has now found that the executive order at the foundation of this legislation violates the First Amendment. Judge Walker specifically noted that the Supreme Court’s decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project — the primary legal authority cited by both the governor and the bill’s sponsors — explicitly stated that Congress could not extend its material support prohibition to domestic organizations. That is precisely what SB 1632 and HB 1471 would do. Codifying this framework into statute does not cure its constitutional defects — it entrenches them.

We note Judge Walker’s closing invocation of George Washington’s promise to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that the American government “gives to bigotry no sanction.” That promise belongs to every American — including Florida’s Muslim communities.

The full text of Judge Walker’s order is available here.

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