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Florida SB 1678 — Anti-BDS Expansion (2025)

  • Law: Florida Senate Bill 1678 (2025 legislative session)
  • Passed: 2025 Florida Legislature
  • Signed by: Governor Ron DeSantis
  • Status: In effect; legal challenges anticipated

What It Does​

Florida SB 1678 extends the state's existing anti-boycott-Israel framework — previously focused on state procurement contracts — to a broader category of public funding recipients. Key expansions:

  • Arts and cultural grants — Recipients of state arts funding (through the Florida Division of Arts and Culture and associated grant programs) are required to certify they do not boycott Israel.
  • Nonprofit funding streams — Nonprofits receiving state or state-administered grants must include an anti-boycott certification.
  • Expanded definition of boycott — The law broadens what counts as a boycott to include an organization's choice not to host events in Israel, not to partner with Israeli institutions, or to publicly endorse BDS-affiliated campaigns.
  • Enforcement mechanism — Grants can be clawed back and future funding denied if a recipient is found to be in violation.

Why Critics Oppose It​

  • Reaches artistic and academic decisions — Requiring an arts organization to certify it will not choose not to perform, exhibit, or collaborate in Israel transforms a government funding program into a political loyalty test for creative expression.
  • Chilling effect on nonprofits — Social-service nonprofits, housing organizations, and advocacy groups that rely on state funding may self-censor on Israel-related issues — or drop funding applications entirely — to avoid the legal exposure of a certification.
  • Broader than commercial conduct — Unlike contract-based anti-BDS laws (which can at least be framed as commercial regulation), this law's reach into grant-funded artistic and nonprofit activity is more clearly targeting the expressive, political dimension of BDS participation.
  • No equivalent for other countries — Florida imposes no similar obligation regarding boycotts of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, or any other country; the targeting of one country's critics reflects political viewpoint discrimination, critics argue.

Constitutional Concerns​

  • 1st Amendment (freedom of speech and association) — Conditions on government grants that require recipients to modify their political or expressive conduct have been limited by Rust v. Sullivan and subsequent cases; however, the Supreme Court's Legal Services Corp. v. Velazquez line of cases suggests that grants cannot be structured to suppress particular viewpoints.
  • 1st Amendment (expressive association) — Nonprofit and arts organizations express political viewpoints through their programming and partnership choices; government may not condition access to a funding market on abandoning those choices.
  • Unconstitutional conditions doctrine — Applies to grants as well as contracts.

As of 2025, legal challenges to Florida SB 1678 are anticipated from civil liberties organizations including the ACLU of Florida. The law's expansion into arts and nonprofit funding takes the legal controversy beyond the commercial-conduct framing the 8th Circuit used to uphold Arkansas's law, making strict scrutiny arguments stronger.

Key Votes to Screen​

Florida legislators who voted YES on SB 1678 voted to extend government-enforced political loyalty requirements into arts funding and nonprofit grants — a significant escalation from the commercial contract context of earlier laws.

Why This Matters for We The Citizens​

SB 1678 is the most aggressive iteration of state-level anti-BDS legislation yet enacted, reaching into the cultural and nonprofit sector in ways that earlier laws did not. It demonstrates how anti-BDS laws, once normalized in the procurement context, expand steadily into new areas of civic life.

See also: Anti-BDS State Laws Overview | Arkansas Act 710 | State Bad Laws Overview

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