Governor DeSantis signs bill letting Florida label groups as terrorists
Ron DeSantis signed the controversial bill (Photo: REUTERS/Nathan Howard)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a measure that empowers state officials to designate organizations as domestic or foreign terrorist groups, allowing forced dissolution, frozen funding and expulsion of supporting students from public universities, Reuters reported on April 6.
Darryl Li, a legal scholar at the University of Chicago, and Shirin Sinnar, a law professor at Stanford Law School, noted that such legislative initiatives “could lay the groundwork for even more sweeping forms of authoritarianism.”
The advocacy group PEN America stated that this law “could chill free speech by placing unprecedented pressure on individuals to avoid speaking, organizing, or engaging with certain viewpoints.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the largest Muslim advocacy groups in the United States, called the law “draconian” and unconstitutional.
Previously, DeSantis and Texas authorities had already designated CAIR as a “terrorist organization,” but those decisions were challenged in court.
According to Reuters, the Donald Trump administration and Republican-led states are resorting to harsh measures against left-wing organizations and pro-Palestinian groups, accusing them of extremism. Human rights advocates reject these accusations and argue that the government is violating free speech by equating criticism of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its occupation of Palestinian territories with anti-Semitism.
Trump’s attempts to deport some of the protesters and freeze funding for the universities where the protests took place have faced legal obstacles.
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