By: Genice Nadal
On April 6, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1471 into law.[1] What the press release called a “counterterrorism framework” is, in practice, something far more insidious: a mechanism for making dissent and solidarity unaffordable for communities least able to pay its price.[2] The statute empowers a small group of executive officials to designate organizations as “domestic terrorists” without any prior judicial finding or criminal conviction.[3] It does not require that any member of the group be charged with a crime.[4] Once a designation is made, the law mandates the immediate expulsion of any college student found to “promote” a designated group.[5] It also strips them of all state financial aid, in-state tuition status, scholarships, fee waivers, and tuition assistance.[6]
The bill is facially neutral. It says nothing about Arabs, Muslims, or Pro-Palestinian students’ rights. It names no religion, no ethnicity, and no campus organization. However, facial neutrality is not the same as innocence. When a law’s operation focuses consequences on communities the state already targets, the Constitution (and basic honesty) demands that we call it what it is.
I. The Designation Power: A New Tool for an Old Pattern
HB 1471 did not emerge from a vacuum. It was drafted by DeSantis’ own office and transmitted to a Republican sponsor.[7] This happened just weeks after the Florida Cabinet publicly questioned whether Islamic schools receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers were “promoting Sharia law.”[8] The bill’s passage followed DeSantis’ December 2025 Executive Order. The Order designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — one of the nation’s oldest Muslim civil rights organizations — as a “domestic terrorist organization.”[9] A federal court promptly enjoined that order on First Amendment grounds.[10] Yet, HB 1471 is, in substantial part, a legislative end-run around that injunction.
The state’s track record is consistent. In 2023, DeSantis’ hand-picked State University System chancellor moved to deactivate two Florida chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).[11] The chancellor accused these chapters of materially supporting Hamas in the wake of the 2023 October 7 attack.[12] The message was clear: on Florida campuses, pro-Palestinian advocacy occupies uniquely precarious ground. Against this backdrop, a statute granting the executive branch unlimited discretion to designate any domestic organization as a terrorist group — with no legislative approval, no independent judicial finding before designation takes effect, and no real oversight — is not a neutral counterterrorism tool.[13] It is a loaded weapon pointed at communities already in the state’s crosshairs.
II. The “Promotion” Standard: Vague by Design
Under HB 1471, a student may be expelled for “making a statement or taking an action that supports, approves, or encourages a terrorist organization’s extralegal violence.”[14] This framing might sound precise, but it is not. First Amendment doctrine has long held that the government cannot punish mere association with or advocacy for disfavored organizations absent proof of specific intent to further unlawful aims.[15] The Supreme Court recognized in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. that even fiery political rhetoric (short of direct incitement) is constitutionally protected.[16] A student who chants “free Palestine,” posts on social media in solidarity with a group later designated under HB 1471, or attends a campus rally does not thereby endorse “extralegal violence.” Yet, the statute’s broad language can easily cover this conduct. The ACLU of Florida put it plainly: the bill’s “vague and overbroad language could easily be weaponized in bad faith against everyday Floridians exercising their First Amendment rights.”[17]
Overbreadth and vagueness are not incidental drafting failures. A law that is unclear about where constitutionally protected speech ends and punishable “promotion” begins chills protected speech by design. The speaker cannot know which side of the line they are on, so they say nothing at all – which is precisely the goal.
III. The First Amendment Problem Is Structural
Courts have consistently held that the government cannot do indirectly what the First Amendment bars it from doing directly.[18] HB 1471 is an architecture for precisely that evasion. The state cannot criminalize protected speech about a disfavored organization. However, under this framework, it can designate the organization a terrorist group without a judicial finding. It can define “promotion” broadly enough to include protected advocacy and then threaten the loss of a college education as the penalty for association.[19]
The designation mechanism itself raises due process concerns. Under the statute, neither a group nor its members need to be charged with any crime before designation takes effect. Although the group can challenge the designation in court, it’s only after it has already been labeled and only after the consequences have already begun to flow.[20]
IV. The Expulsion Provision: Pricing Out Dissent
The most structurally violent provision of HB 1471 is also its most facially neutral: the immediate loss of all financial aid upon expulsion.[21] Students who rely on state financial aid are disproportionately students of color, first-generation college students, and students from low-income households.[22] For these students, aid is not supplementary; it is essential to enrollment. Expulsion without financial aid does not merely remove a student from campus. It forecloses the degree entirely, often alongside the economic mobility it represents.[23] It may trigger loan repayment obligations that the student cannot meet. It also leaves a disciplinary record that shadows every future application.
The law imposes a structurally disparate burden. For a student from a wealthy family, the threat of expulsion is serious. For a first-generation low-income student on grants and loans, expulsion under HB 1471 may be economically catastrophic. Thus, the communities most likely to engage in solidarity activism are also those least able to bear the financial consequences. This is not accidental. The bill’s legislative history shows its education provisions were designed to neutralize specific campus movements. The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Hillary Cassel, expressly stated, “[I]f you are a student that says, ‘I wanna hold my flag for a certified domestic terrorist organization,’ and you try to promote other students into that organization, you can be expelled.”[24] The context in which this bill was drafted — following the deactivation of SJP chapters, the Cabinet’s scrutiny of Muslim schools, and the enjoined CAIR designation — leaves little ambiguity about which students are in view.
V. The Racialization of Risk
What makes HB 1471 more than a First Amendment problem is its targeting’s specificity. It is not simply that the law chills dissent. It is that it chills particular dissent: the dissent of communities whose advocacy the state has repeatedly treated as presumptively suspect. Muslim schools receiving vouchers were publicly questioned by the Florida Cabinet.[25] Two Islamic schools, Hifz Academy and Bayaan Academy, were singled out in Cabinet proceedings over an alleged family connection to the Muslim Brotherhood.[26] The students most exposed to HB 1471’s expulsion provision — Arab students, Muslim students, students engaging in pro-Palestinian solidarity activism — are not a random cross-section of Florida’s college population. They are communities that have already been named, targeted, and whose campus advocacy is already under state scrutiny. When the law promises immediate expulsion and total financial aid revocation for “promoting” a group that state officials have demonstrated eagerness to designate, the chilling effect is not evenly distributed. It falls hardest on those who can least afford to be chilled and who already have the most reason to fear.
VI. Conclusion
HB 1471 does not merely punish protest. It prices dissent out of reach for the communities most likely to engage in it. It does so through the one instrument students cannot afford to lose: their education. A statute that vests unchecked designation authority in a handful of executive officials, defines “promotion” broadly enough to capture protected advocacy, and punishes the designated conduct with immediate expulsion and total financial ruin is not a counterterrorism measure. Rather, it is a suppression mechanism that relies on the financial vulnerability of its targets to do the work that the First Amendment would otherwise forbid. The courts have already signaled the constitutional limits.[27] Now, the question is whether, having been told it could not act unilaterally, the state has succeeded in laundering the same outcome through the Legislature.
[1] Press Release from Executive Office of Governor Ron DeSantis, Governor Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation to Combat Terrorist Groups and Ban Sharia Law in Florida (Apr. 6, 2026), https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2026/governor-ron-desantis-signs-legislation-combat-terrorist-groups-and-ban-sharia-law [https://perma.cc/PN4F-HJUE].
[2] Id.
[3] H.B. 1471, 2026 128th Sess. (Fl. 2026); Lawrence Mower, Florida Legislature approves giving DeSantis power to name ‘terrorist’ groups, Miami Herald (Mar. 12, 2026 at 5:49 PM EDT) https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article315032839.html [https://perma.cc/FK58-2RNP].
[4] Id.
[5] H.B. 1471, 2026 128th Sess. (Fl. 2026).
[6] Id.
[7] Liv Caputo, ‘Terrorist’ bill allowing for student expulsion, voucher losses, clears Legislature, Florida Phoenix (Mar. 12, 2026 at 2:06 PM EDT), https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/03/12/terrorist-bill-allowing-for-student-expulsion-voucher-losses-clears-legislature/ [https://perma.cc/9YTK-9RQL].
[8] Id.
[9] Paul Leech, Florida Allows State Designation of Domestic Terrorist Organizations, Jurist (Apr. 7, 2026 at 6:19 PM EDT), https://www.jurist.org/news/2026/04/florida-allows-state-designation-of-domestic-terrorist-organizations/ [https://perma.cc/AS9B-RPL8].
[10] Id.
[11] Mower, supra note 3.
[12] Id.
[13] Mitch Perry, Bill allowing state to designate domestic terrorist organizations passes in FL House , Florida Phoenix (Mar. 3, 2026 at 5:29 PM EDT), https://floridaphoenix.com/2026/03/03/bill-allowing-state-to-designate-domestic-terrorist-organizations-passes-in-fl-house/ [https://perma.cc/PQR4-99UH].
[14] Mower, supra note 3.
[15] See Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 448 (1969); Humanitarian Law Project v. Reno, 9 F. Supp. 2d 1176, 1190 (C.D. Cal. 1998), aff’d, 205 F.3d 1130 (9th Cir. 2000).
[16] NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886, 911 (1982).
[17] Letter from Bacardi L. Jackson, Executive Director, ACLU Florida to Ileana Garcia, Chair, Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice (Feb. 16, 2026).
[18] See Nat’l Rifle Assoc. of Am. v. Vullo, 602 U.S. 175, 190; Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 78 (1963).
[19] Perry, supra note 13.
[20] Id.
[21] H.B. 1471, 2026 128th Sess. (Fl. 2026).
[22] Indicator 22: Financial Aid, Nat’l Ctr. for Educ. Stud.: Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups (Feb. 2019), https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_rec.asp [https://perma.cc/G6P3-FT88].
[23] Julia B. Isaac, Isabel V. Sawhill, & Ron Haskins, Getting Ahead or Losing Ground; Economic Mobility in America 91, The Brookings Instit. (2016), https://www.pew.org/-/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/economic_mobility/economicmobilityinamericafullpdf.pdf [https://perma.cc/C6GJ-A7PV].
[24] Caputo, supra note 7.
[25] Liv Caputo, Private Islamic schools under fire from Florida Cabinet received millions in taxpayer dollars, Florida Phoenix (Oct. 28, 2025 at 1:07 PM EDT), https://floridaphoenix.com/briefs/private-islamic-schools-under-fire-from-florida-cabinet-received-millions-in-taxpayer-dollars/ [https://perma.cc/6CYU-9PDF].
[26] Leech, supra note 9.
[27] CAIR-Found., Inc. v. Desantis, No. 4:25CV516-MW/MJF, 2026 WL 613468, at *5 (N.D. Fla. Mar. 4, 2026).
