TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office is behind a bill blasted by free speech advocates that would give him new powers to target college students.

Emails obtained through a records request show that DeSantis staffers last year wrote an original draft of SB 1632, which would allow the governor to label groups as “domestic terrorist organizations” and expel college students who support them.

The Senate passed a companion bill, HB 1471, last week. It is a House vote away from heading to DeSantis’ desk.

The records shed light on the origins of the legislation, which followed years of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses that DeSantis has tried to stamp out. In 2023, for example, DeSantis ordered the removal of two chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine after the head of the state university system said the groups were illegally supporting terrorists.

On Nov. 20, DeSantis’ deputy legislative affairs director, Chad Kunde, emailed a draft of SB 1632 to Sen. Erin Grall, a Vero Beach Republican who later sponsored it. Metadata shows the draft was created and edited by members of DeSantis’ Office of Policy and Budget.

The governor’s proposal included giving him the authority, through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement he oversees, to label groups as “domestic terrorist organizations.” (The current version requires those designations be approved by the governor as well as members of the Cabinet.)

The draft did not mention automatically expelling college students who “support” those organizations, as the latest version does.

Instead, the governor’s team proposed higher criminal penalties for people arrested on charges relating to “benefiting, promoting, or furthering the interests of a designated domestic terrorist organization.”

Pro-Palestinian protesters who were arrested in 2024 for disobeying a lawful order at the University of Florida, for example, would have seen the charge increased from a second-degree misdemeanor to a first-degree misdemeanor, which carries a penalty of up to a year in jail.

Or protesters arrested for resisting an officer without violence, a first-degree misdemeanor, would instead face a first-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Those provisions are no longer in the bill.

The bill would also bar supporters of “terrorist organizations” from receiving state funds — a response to reports of Islamic schools receiving vouchers.

Grall and the House sponsor, Dania Beach Republican Rep. Hillary Cassel, have also touted a provision not included in DeSantis’ proposal: barring courts from considering religious codes, including Islamic Sharia law, in legal cases.

Grall and Cassel have said Sharia law sometimes comes up in contract and family disputes.

“The Governor’s office provided feedback on the language in the bill,” Grall said in a text message. “The final bill was responsive to issues raised during committees and on the Senate floor, as well as my collaboration with Representative Cassel.”

Cassel did not respond to a request for comment.

DeSantis has billed himself as a champion for free speech. But the legislation has been denounced by free speech groups, including the First Amendment Foundation.

Tyler Coward, lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the student provisions are “flatly unconstitutional.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has consistently held that it is unconstitutional to limit speech, even speech in support of terrorist groups, he noted.

In 1972, the court ruled that campus organizations can’t be denied recognition if chapters at other schools engaged in violence. In 2010, it ruled that “material support” for terrorist organizations included actual support in the form of contributions — not speech or writing.

Grall tried to assuage those concerns last week by clarifying when a student would be considered to be promoting a terrorist organization. It would have to include a student making a statement supporting or approving a terrorist organization’s “extralegal violence.”

Coward said the change is still unconstitutional because it’s a “content-based punishment for speech.”

“As is often the case, last-minute additions like this to fix constitutional problems oftentimes miss the mark,” Coward said.

DeSantis spokesperson Gatlin Nennstiel did not answer questions about the free speech concerns.

“The legislation you reference is part of Governor Desantis’ ongoing effort to keep Florida free and safe,” Nennstiel said in a statement.

He pointed to DeSantis’ executive order in December naming the Council on American Islamic Relations a terrorist organization.

A federal judge temporarily stopped that executive order on free speech grounds last week.

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