Florida’s move to declare the Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy and civil rights groups, a foreign terrorist organization was unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
Judge Mark E. Walker of the Federal District Court in Tallahassee said that Gov. Ron DeSantis’s attempt to withhold distribution of government benefits to CAIR, as the organization is known, or to anyone who provides it with “material support or resources,” violated the First Amendment rights to free speech, petition and free association.
“The First Amendment bars the governor from continuing the troubling trend of using an executive office to make a political statement at the expense of others’ constitutional rights,” wrote Judge Walker, who has frequently ruled against the DeSantis administration.
He granted the preliminary injunction sought by CAIR after Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, signed an executive order in December declaring the organization a terrorist group. CAIR sued in federal court a week later.
Mr. DeSantis had followed Texas, which issued a similar declaration in November, though Florida’s declaration did not appear to prohibit CAIR from buying land in the state like the one in Texas.
In Florida, Judge Walker wrote that CAIR’s free speech rights were infringed when an audio production company backed out of an agreement to make a podcast with the organization as a result of Mr. DeSantis’s order.
“No governor has the right to violate the Constitution by unilaterally declaring an American organization whose speech he dislikes a ‘terrorist’ group and then punish them and their supporters, all without due process,” Lena Masri, CAIR’s litigation director and general counselor, and Hiba Rahim, CAIR Florida’s executive director, said in a joint statement.
Mr. DeSantis’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While the governor has broad authority to issue executive orders, the order against CAIR went beyond those powers, the judge said. He wrote that Florida’s order had declared CAIR a terrorist organization “with no substantive explanation of his authority to do so, no legislative involvement and no mechanism for judicial review.”
State lawmakers, who are in regular session until next week, have filed bills providing a process to designate groups as terrorist organizations. The American Civil Liberties Union has called the legislation “sweeping” and warned that it could violate the First Amendment.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
The post Judge Blocks DeSantis’s Declaration of Muslim Group as Terrorist Organization appeared first on New York Times.
