Hours after Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Wednesday that the state would soon designate the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) a domestic terrorist organization, the Muslim civil rights advocacy group filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging that designation as unconstitutional and are calling for an injunction to halt its enforcement.
DeSantis made the announced on the day a new law (HB 1471) went into effect allowing the move. It empowers the head of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to label organizations as domestic or foreign terrorist groups on evidence of specific criteria, including engagement in terrorist activity as defined by Florida law.
Targeted organizations must be based in Florida and pose an ongoing threat to the security of Florida or the United States. The governor and Cabinet would have to ratify the declaration.
The governor also announced that Antifa and the Muslim Brotherhood had also been recommended by FDLE head Mark Glass to be designated domestic terrorist groups, as well as more than 90 groups to be designated foreign terrorist organizations.
The ACLU, the ACLU of Florida, and the Southern Poverty Law Center are among the legal groups acting as counsel for CAIR and CAIR Florida in the case, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee.
“There are practically no safeguards,” the lawsuit states. “Florida officials may designate an organization without giving it meaningful notice or a meaningful opportunity to challenge the designation before a neutral decisionmaker. In effect, the state’s new designation regime empowers Governor DeSantis, the Chief of Domestic Security, and the Cabinet to play judge, jury, and nonprofit executioner.” The impending designation “has no basis,” the lawsuit continues, targeting as it does the country’s largest Muslim advocacy and civil rights organization through its Florida chapter, both of which “serve and employ Floridians.”
“The DTO [Domestic Terrorist Organization] regime contains no meaningful pre-designation, notice requirement, no evidentiary requirements, no standard of proof, and no requirement of a meaningful hearing before a neutral decisionmaker,” the lawsuit alleges. “It vests unbridled discretion in Florida’s executive branch to punish, ostracize, and silence civil society organizations with which it disagrees, based on nothing more than allegations of wrongdoing.”
DeSantis said Wednesday that he anticipated a lawsuit challenging the designation.
He’d attempted to designate CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as domestic terrorist organizations through an executive order in December. After CAIR legally challenged that in court, a federal judge issued a temporary injunction blocking that designation, which the DeSantis administration has appealed.
The suit notes that “Immediately after a designation becomes effective, the designated organization—as well as its employees, officers, board members, and third parties —are subject to a staggering array of criminal, civil, and administrative penalties. In the case of a mission-driven nonprofit, these penalties effectively criminalize virtually all of the designated group’s activities to advance its mission, including its speech. ley also criminalize a wide array of third-party interactions with the designated group, which in turn limit the organization’s ability to speak, to receive information, and to function. In short, the far-reaching and severe penalties make it impossible for the organization to continue operating.”
–Mitch Perry, Florida Phoenix, and FlaglerLive
Leave a Reply