Florida's State Board of Education approved a rule this week barring private schools affiliated with terrorist organizations from receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers—a direct consequence of the state's designation of the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a domestic terror group.
For ordinary Americans, the principle is plain: if your government calls a group a terror threat, public money shouldn't flow to schools that do business with it. Florida isn't waiting for Washington to act.
The board approved the change October 14 on a consent agenda—no discussion, no debate. It enforces HB 1471, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year, which defines domestic terror organizations and prohibits affiliated schools from receiving voucher funds. Private schools must now disclose on state forms whether they are owned or operated by a designated terror group, or whether they employ, contract with, or accept funds from anyone affiliated with one. A single employee who belongs to CAIR, or one donation from a CAIR-linked source, could cost a school its eligibility.
The practical impact falls hardest on Islamic schools. Florida's education directory lists roughly 25 Islamic private schools out of 3,546 total. More than half the state's private schools are religious—about 1,300 Christian and 230 Catholic—but only Islamic schools face the CAIR affiliation test.
Naples Daily News framed the rule as part of a "broader DeSantis-era effort to wield education policy in larger political and cultural disputes"—language that treats protecting tax dollars from designated terror affiliates as culture-war theater rather than basic governance.
Before the law passed, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson condemned using "taxpayer-funded school vouchers" to promote Sharia law. Uthmeier specifically responded to an investigation of two Tampa Islamic schools—Hifz Academy and Bayaan Academy.
CAIR's Florida chapter declined to comment on the board's action. Previously, deputy director Hiba Rahim said schools worried about being targeted by a "false association with things like Sharia." First Amendment experts cited by Naples Daily News warn the rule could infringe on constitutional rights, including the ban on government endorsement of religion. That claim warrants scrutiny: the rule doesn't target a faith. It targets affiliation with a group the state has labeled terrorist. Whether that designation survives court challenge is a separate question from whether the policy is facially constitutional.
Contrast Florida's approach with what's happening in Minnesota, where the Board of Trustees just voted to siphon up to $25 million a year from community and technical colleges—the institutions serving working-class students—to prop up struggling universities that have already cut 40% of their workforce. As Dakota County Technical College president Michael Berndt put it, "It's frankly demoralizing to our employees to see the outcome of our work significantly reduced by seeing our allocation dollars reduced." One state guards taxpayer dollars from terror-tied schools. Another raids the community colleges to bail out mismanaged universities.
The open question: will courts treat Florida's rule as a neutral anti-terror measure or as government targeting of a religious minority by proxy? The answer determines whether other states follow—or whether the designation becomes a legal dead letter.
