ATLANTA—The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Selendy Gay PLLC today filed an amicus brief supporting the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, in its challenge to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s executive order targeting the organization. The brief argues that the order violates the First Amendment and threatens rights essential to our democracy, and it urges the appeals court to affirm a district court ruling blocking the order. 

“The First Amendment doesn’t allow the government to blacklist advocacy organizations simply because officials disagree with their views,” said Xiangnong (George) Wang, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute. “Gov. DeSantis’s executive order is a dangerous attempt to punish an American civil rights organization based on its perceived ideology and associations. If the executive order is allowed to stand, it would embolden state officials of all political stripes to target advocacy groups they disfavor.”

Executive Order 25-244, titled “Protecting Floridians from Radical Islamic Terrorist Organizations,” labels CAIR a “terrorist organization” and directs Florida agencies to deny the organization and those who provide it support access to contracts, employment opportunities, funding, and other government benefits and privileges.

The brief argues that the court should subject the executive order to the most stringent constitutional scrutiny because the order singles out CAIR for punishment based on the organization’s purported viewpoint and is motivated by a desire to suppress disfavored ideas. It also explains that the order cannot survive any form of heightened scrutiny and is therefore unconstitutional. The brief explains that the order prevents CAIR from engaging in important advocacy work and chills the expressive and associational rights of those who wish to work with or support CAIR, and it warns that accepting Florida’s defense of the order would give governments extraordinary authority to target and punish a wide range of groups for their protected speech and association.

In March, a federal district court preliminarily blocked enforcement of the executive order, holding that the order violates the First Amendment because it coerces third parties to cease their protected expressive and associational activities with CAIR. Gov. DeSantis appealed the district court’s decision.

In a separate lawsuit filed earlier this month, CAIR and its Florida affiliate are challenging recently enacted Florida laws that allow state officials to designate groups as domestic terrorist organizations based on unproven allegations.

Read today’s amicus brief filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit here.

Read more about the case here.

Lawyers on the case include Jameel Jaffer, Alex Abdo, Anna Diakun, and Xiangnong (George) Wang for the Knight First Amendment Institute; and Corey Stoughton and Dylan Jarrett for Selendy Gay PLLC.

For more information, contact: Gabriel Tyler, [email protected]