Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, and the Florida Cabinet voted to designate the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Muslim Brotherhood and more than 90 other organizations as terror groups on Tuesday.
In a more-than-400-page agenda document for the vote, the state alleged that “there is substantial evidence that CAIR is engaging in terrorist activity” and accused the group of having connections to Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holyland Foundation terrorism financing trial.
In the same vote, Florida applied foreign terrorist designations to groups already listed by the State Department as terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, the Houthis and the Continuity Irish Republican Army.
CAIR bills itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties organization” and notes on its website that it has never been charged with a crime.DeSantis signed an executive order in December designating CAIR as a foreign terrorist organization, which a federal judge blocked in March.
In July, DeSantis signed a bill granting him and the state Cabinet new powers to designate groups as terrorist organizations and recommended that CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood and the other groups designated on Tuesday be the first to be so sanctioned.
The bill, which DeSantis has described as an “anti-Sharia law” measure, allows the state to legally dissolve groups designated as terrorists and creates criminal penalties for those that fail to do so. It also allows for the expulsion of any students in the Florida university system who promote the groups and bars the groups from certain other state funding, including contracts.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represented CAIR in its lawsuit against DeSantis’s executive order, is also suing the state to stop the implementation of the terrorism designation law.
“Gov. DeSantis’s use of Florida’s dangerous new ‘terrorism’ designation regime against CAIR and its Florida chapter is baseless and unconstitutional,” Hina Shamsi, director of ACLU’s national security project, stated on Tuesday.
“There are simply no legitimate grounds to brand our clients with a reviled label, impose crippling criminal penalties and force them to shut their doors in Florida,” Shamsi said.
Florida state attorney general James Uthmeier said that the designation “drew a line on terrorism.”
“The free state of Florida will not launder terrorism through our schools,” he said. “We will name these groups, cut off the money and hold those who bankroll them accountable.”
According to the ACLU, the designations will take effect on Nov. 5 if they are not blocked in court.
