ACLU sues DeSantis for cracking down on pro-Palestinian group
The news
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Thursday, claiming Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida education officials violated the First Amendment when they ordered the withdrawal of support for Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus activist group.
The order affected the group’s chapters at the University of Florida and the University of South Florida.
What the lawsuit says
The order, which has not yet been implemented, has already “significantly chilled” the activities of the University of Florida chapter, “making the board and members think twice before organizing and advocating for Palestine,” the lawsuit said .
The lawsuit also alleges that Florida’s order to deactivate the chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine is based on claims about the national organization and not the local chapters.
In addition to Governor DeSantis, the lawsuit names Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, as a defendant; Ben Sasse, president of the University of Florida; and system and university board members.
A spokesperson for the University of Florida said it did not comment on pending litigation, but said in an earlier statement that the university had not removed any student organizations.
Jeremy T. Redfern, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, said: “Groups claiming to be part of a foreign terrorist movement have no place on our college campuses.”
Why Florida banned the group
Two weeks after the Hamas attack in Israel, Mr. Rodrigues, who oversees the state’s 12 public universities, wrote to their presidents that the group’s chapters should be “deactivated,” meaning they no longer had access to university space or financing.
The decision, which Mr. Rodrigues said was based on consultation with Governor DeSantis, was not based on what local departments said or did, but rather on what the letter described as the national organization’s “support of terrorism.”
The national group had released a “Day of Resistance” toolkit, which described the Hamas attack as “the resistance” and stated that “Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, and not in solidarity with this movement .”
Mr. Rodrigues’ letter stated that providing material support to foreign terrorist organizations was a crime under Florida law.
Florida isn’t the only place where things are going bad
Florida’s action against SJP chapters comes amid a broader crackdown on the student group.
On October 25, two pro-Israel groups, the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center, a nonprofit Jewish advocacy organization, wrote a letter to nearly 200 college presidents urging them to investigate their chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine.
In the days that followed, Brandeis University — which is not affiliated with the Brandeis Center — announced it would no longer recognize the chapter because the national group “openly supports Hamas.” Columbia and George Washington University have also suspended their chapters.
While free speech groups decried the actions, the First Amendment was not in play because these universities, unlike the University of Florida, are private.
The issues of freedom of expression
Jonathan Friedman, executive director of PEN America, a free speech group, said he was concerned about the crackdown on the group but that the Florida case was a clear violation of the First Amendment. The statute cited by Mr. Rodrigues applies to economic or other tangible support for a terrorist organization, not to acts of expression.
“Rhetorical support is not material support,” he said.
At one Florida Board of Directors meeting on November 9Mr. Rodrigues acknowledged that there could be legal issues with banning the chapters.
Still, Mr. Rodrigues said the board was seeking its own legal advice, and that he was working with the two universities to seek “confirmation” from their SJP chapters that they rejected violence, were not part of Hamas and would follow the law.
Those demands are also illegal, said Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project.
“It is dangerous, divisive and insulting to ask a student group to proclaim its innocence for something it did not do or say,” she said. “It is coerced speech, and that violates the First Amendment.”