{"id":86279,"date":"2025-12-17T04:55:23","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T04:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/86279\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T04:55:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T04:55:23","slug":"muslim-rights-group-sues-desantis-over-foreign-terrorist-label-orlando-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/86279\/","title":{"rendered":"Muslim rights group sues DeSantis over \u2018foreign terrorist\u2019 label \u2013 Orlando Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"

A leading Muslim civil rights group in the U.S. has sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a> over his order designating it and another organization as a \u201c foreign terrorist organization<\/a>,\u201d saying the directive was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as CAIR, has more than 20 chapters across the United States and its work involves legal actions, advocacy and education outreach.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit was filed late Monday by the CAIR-Foundation and CAIR-Florida, its affiliate in the state. The suit asked a federal judge in Tallahassee to declare DeSantis\u2019 order unlawful and unconstitutional and prevent it from being enforced.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has usurped the exclusive authority of the federal government to identify and designate terrorist organizations by baselessly declaring CAIR a terrorist organization,\u201d the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n

CAIR said in the lawsuit that it was targeted by DeSantis for defending the free speech rights of people in cases in which state officials and officials elsewhere had tried to punish or silence those who had expressed support for Palestinian human rights.<\/p>\n

The order by DeSantis last week also gives the same \u201cforeign terrorist\u201d label to the Muslim Brotherhood<\/a>, a pan-Arab Islamist political movement. President Donald Trump last month<\/a> issued an executive order that sets in motion a process to designate certain chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization.<\/p>\n

The governor\u2019s order instructs Florida agencies to prevent the two groups and those who have provided them material support from receiving contracts, employment and funds from a state executive or cabinet agency.<\/p>\n

Florida has an estimated 500,000 Muslim residents, according to CAIR.<\/p>\n

When reached by email for comment on Tuesday, the governor\u2019s press secretary, Molly Best, referred to DeSantis\u2019 recent social media posts on the topic in which he said he looked forward to a trial. In one post, DeSantis said, \u201cI look forward to discovery \u2014 especially the CAIR finances. Should be illuminating!\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued a similar proclamation in Texas. CAIR last month asked a federal judge to strike down Abbott\u2019s proclamation, saying in a lawsuit<\/a> that it was \u201cnot only contrary to the United States Constitution, but finds no support in any Texas law.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Mike Schneider on Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leading Muslim civil rights group in the U.S. has sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over his order…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[28,29,114,115,139,141,140,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-86279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-news","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-orlando","13":"tag-orlando-headlines","14":"tag-orlando-news","15":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86279","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=86279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}