{"id":193083,"date":"2026-03-16T04:42:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T04:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/193083\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T04:42:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T04:42:11","slug":"university-of-florida-threatened-with-lawsuit-for-disbanding-republican-student-group-over-nazi-salute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/193083\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Florida threatened with lawsuit for disbanding Republican student group over Nazi salute"},"content":{"rendered":"

The University of Florida is facing threats of a lawsuit for disbanding a Republican student group<\/a> after one of its leaders was photographed doing the Nazi salute.<\/p>\n

GOP Lake County commissioner and attorney Anthony Sabatini called the move to dissolve the Florida\u00a0Federation of College\u00a0Republicans chapter at UF \u201ccompletely illegal\u201d and a free speech violation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is completely illegal\u2014I spoke with\u00a0UFCR\u00a0leadership & I will be filing a First Amendment retaliation lawsuit under Section 1983 Monday morning against\u00a0UF\u00a0seeking an injunction,\u201d he wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cUF has engaged in enormous viewpoint discrimination over the past year & it must be stopped NOW.\u201d <\/p>\n

The University of Florida\u2019s College Republicans chapter was disbanded on Saturday. FFCRGOP\/Instagram<\/p>\n

The university temporarily removed the College Republicans chapter as a student organization after the Florida Federation of College Republicans flagged multiple misconduct allegations, including one about \u201ca recent antisemitic gesture\u201d made by a member.<\/p>\n

North Carolina-based journalist Sloan Rachmuth was the first to share a photo of two students performing the Sieg Heil, which was sent to a since-shuttered gaming chatroom.<\/p>\n

The chapter\u2019s disbandment sparked a rift among conservative Floridians as some, like Sen. Rick Scott, praised UF\u2019s action.<\/p>\n

\u201cAntisemitism has no place in the Republican Party, higher education or our country. Grateful to\u00a0UF\u00a0for working with the FFCR to stand with Jewish students and resolve this quickly,\u201d Scott, the former governor of Florida, wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two students at UF allegedly performed the Nazi salute. TNS via Getty Images<\/p>\n

UF\u2019s College Republicans group (UFCR) claimed they operate under the College Republicans of America, not the FFCR, which originally reported the student organization.<\/p>\n

Anthony Sabatini threatened legal action against UF over the disbandment. Photo by Gary White \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/p>\n

The CRA and the UFCR both accused FFCR of lying in order to get the club disbanded.<\/p>\n

UF said <\/a>that the chapter will eventually be permitted to restart with new student leadership.<\/p>\n

The university has the highest percentage of Jewish students<\/a> out of any public college in the country.<\/p>\n

The UFCR disbandment came just three days after the club welcomed controversial gubernatorial candidate James Fishback<\/a> to campus. <\/p>\n

On Saturday, Fishback swore to file an amicus brief in support of the UFCR and every student group\u2019s right to free speech in response to the chapter\u2019s removal, according to a post on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The University of Florida is facing threats of a lawsuit for disbanding a Republican student group after one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[41480,28,30,29,833,4219,2512,4278],"class_list":["post-193083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-antisemitism","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-lawsuit","tag-republicans","tag-university-of-florida","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}