The lawsuit comes after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott accused the advocacy group of ties to Hamas.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday for designating the group a foreign terrorist and transnational criminal organization.
The lawsuit, filed in west Texas U.S. District Court by the group alongside the Muslim Legal Fund of America, comes after CAIR threatened legal action against Abbott on Tuesday if he attempted “to turn this publicity stunt into actual policy.” CAIR says that proclamation, which bars its members from buying land in Texas, violates its members’ constitutional property and free speech rights.
Abbott’s proclamation authorized “heightened penalties” against CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood and prohibited the organizations from purchasing land in Texas, alleging that CAIR had “repeatedly employed, affiliated with, and supported individuals promoting terrorism-related activities.”
The proclamation refers to CAIR as a “successor organization” to the Muslim Brotherhood — a decades-old Islamist organization — a claim that CAIR rejects. It also alleges CAIR’s executive director “publicly praised and supported Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack against Israel,” but CAIR says in its lawsuit that it has condemned the attack and others perpetrated by Hamas.
CAIR Litigation Director and General Counsel Lena Masri in a statement called the lawsuit “our first step towards defeating Governor Abbott again so that our nation protects free speech and due process for all Americans.”
“No civil rights organizations are safe if a governor can baselessly and unilaterally declare any of them terrorist groups, ban them from buying land, and threaten them with closure,” Masri said. “We have beaten Greg Abbott’s attacks on the First Amendment before, and God willing, we will do it again now.”
Republican officials have repeatedly called for the group to be investigated, with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asking the Treasury Department to probe the organization’s funding sources last month.
The Muslim advocacy group has sued Abbott on several occasions, winning three previous cases challenging the governor’s moves to crack down on anti-Israel speech.
A spokesperson for Abbott’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.