CAIR-Florida has suspended its operations in the state indefinitely after a federal court rejected its emergency request to block Florida’s designation of the group as a domestic terrorist organization.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said on social media Thursday that the court “upheld” the state’s Domestic Terrorist Organization law. The ruling does not resolve the lawsuit filed by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group that describes itself as a civil rights organization, and its Florida chapter, which argues the law violates the First Amendment and due process.
CAIR-Florida posted a bright orange sign outside its office in Temple Terrace, near Tampa, announcing its closure.
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“We have suspended our operations in Florida because of Governor [Ron] DeSantis and other state officials’ baseless and unconstitutional enforcement of the state’s unprecedented new ‘domestic terrorist organization’ laws against us,” the sign reads.
The group also stopped accepting online donations from Florida residents.
In April, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two bills into law establishing a “domestic terrorist organization” designation process.
The law, which took effect July 1, allows the state’s chief of domestic security to recommend designations. The governor and Cabinet then vote on them.
It also includes a criminal penalty for joining, supporting or assisting a designated domestic terrorist organization, as well as restrictions on public funding, contracts and certain campus activities.
Under this law, Florida officials can “brand a nonprofit corporation with debilitating stigma and then use an array of state authorities to immediately silence and incapacitate the organization by subjecting it, its employees, and a wide range of others who associate with it, to extraordinarily broad and severe criminal and civil penalties,” the American Civil Liberties Union said in an October statement.
Mr. DeSantis and the Cabinet voted Sept. 29 to designate CAIR and CAIR-Florida as domestic terrorist organizations.
The groups’ first lawsuit was dismissed Oct. 1 because the court found they lacked standing, and they filed a new complaint hours later. The ACLU urged the court in October to temporarily block what it called an unconstitutional terrorism designation.
The state cited CAIR’s identification in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial and alleged ties to Hamas, according to Florida Department of Law Enforcement documents presented to the Cabinet.
CAIR denies engaging in terrorist activity and says it has never been charged with a crime.
The designation follows an earlier attempt.
Mr. DeSantis first tried to designate CAIR through a December executive order. A federal judge blocked that order in March, and the DeSantis administration appealed.
In July, Mr. DeSantis said, “We’ll definitely get sued,” but added that the statute provided a stronger legal framework than the executive order.
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