By: Jim Turner, The News Service of Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday signed a bill allowing the state to designate groups as “domestic terrorist organizations.” It backs up an executive order he issued in December placing that label on two Islamic groups.
The law, effective July 1, bars a court or other adjudicatory body from enforcing any provision of a religious or foreign law, with an emphasis against the Islamic code known as Sharia law.
Another provision allows the state’s Chief of Domestic Security — currently Florida Department of Law Enforcement Commissioner Mark Glass — to designate a domestic or foreign terrorist organization. The Governor and the Cabinet would approve the designation.
“The legislation we’ll sign today is the strongest action Florida has ever taken to protect its people from this influence,” DeSantis said during a bill signing event at the University of South Florida’s Gibbons Alumni Center in Tampa. “And obviously, it spans finance, it spans political, it spans culture.”
The legislation (HB 1471) was filed in support of DeSantis’ executive order classifying the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, and the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations.
In March, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a preliminary injunction against the order, writing that it violated CAIR’s rights by targeting and threatening those providing the organization with material support.
Criticizing the legislation DeSantis’ office helped author as advancing “a political agenda,” CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hiba Rahim said in a statement on Monday the law jeopardizes student speech, freedom of religion and due process.
“This is not just about CAIR. This expanded and deeply flawed framework can attack any organization that dares to dissent,” Rahim said in a statement. “As Floridians, together, we’ll watch how this unprecedented law is enforced, and whether it is used or abused.”
DeSantis acknowledged that Sharia law isn’t going to be practiced in Florida courts, but the new state law is intended to get ahead of its “creep into different institutions.”
“What I see happening in Europe, I see a migration not to assimilate, but to displace the current cultures that are there,” DeSantis said. “We obviously are not going to allow that to happen here in the state of Florida.”
The measure also outlines rules for expelling students at state universities who “promote” support for such groups.
If a student’s actions can be “reasonably interpreted” as an actual threat of violence; disrupt the learning environment; infringe upon the rights of others; or offer “material support for or the recruitment of members for such an organization,” they can be expelled under the new law.
Other parts of the bill bar schools affiliated with designated terrorist organizations from receiving state K-12 scholarship program money. Also, public universities and colleges are prohibited from spending state or federal funds to support programs or campus activities that promote a designated terrorist organization.
The proposal was approved in the Republican-controlled Legislature by votes of 80-25 in the House and 25-11 in the Senate.
While the legislation was debated, Democrats raised concerns the bill and a related public records exemption (HB 1473) blocking documents showing how a “terrorist” designation is reached, would deprive any group hit with the label of due process.
Opponents of the bill also expressed concerns over whether people, especially students on college campuses, could inadvertently be accused of being a member of a designated domestic terrorist organization and suffer consequences without a conviction.
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