Texas Attorney General Defends CAIR Terror Designation, Pushes Back on Islamic Group’s Lawsuit

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a legal response defending the state’s designation of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations, responding to the latter’s federal lawsuit challenging the decision as a violation of free speech rights.

The legal dispute stems from a proclamation signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last month declaring the terrorist designations under state law, citing in part what officials described as longstanding ideological and operational ties between CAIR and Islamist movements hostile to the US and its allies. CAIR, a nonprofit organization that advocates on behalf of Muslim Americans, has especially been scrutinized by US authorities over alleged ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

In response, the Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin chapters of CAIR sued Abbott and Paxton, arguing the proclamation “chills” their freedom of speech and association under the First Amendment of the US Constitution and “retaliates against” them for exercising such rights. The CAIR chapters asked the court to stop the state from enforcing the designations and requested “compensatory damages,” according to the complaint.

Paxton on Tuesday announced that his office had taken legal action the prior day by filing an affidavit defending the Texas proclamation, arguing the terrorist designation is a lawful national-security measure aimed at protecting Texans from extremist influence, not a violation of free speech.

“Radical Islamist terrorist groups are anti-American, and the infiltration of these dangerous individuals into Texas must be stopped,” Paxton said in a statement. “My office will continue to defend the governor’s lawful, accurate declaration that CAIR is an FTO [foreign terrorist organization], as well as Texas’s right to protect itself from organizations with documented ties to foreign extremist movements.”

In court filings, Paxton rejected CAIR’s arguments as “speculative” and “baseless,” saying the local chapters failed to show concrete harm caused by the designation. Noting that his office has not pursued any legal action related to Abbott’s designation, Paxton argued the groups can’t sue as the issue currently falls within the authority of Texas’s political leadership, not the courts.

The attorney general’s office emphasized that Texas has broad authority to act against groups it deems a public safety risk, particularly amid heightened concerns over global terrorism and antisemitic violence following the war between Israel and Hamas.

Paxton also argued that the suit has no merit because Texas did not take action against the local chapters but rather CAIR’s national entity, which he described as a “different legal entity.”

CAIR officials castigated Paxton’s filing and vowed to continue their legal fight.

“Although Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is now claiming that Governor Abbott’s unconstitutional order does not apply to CAIR-Texas, the sweeping order makes no such distinction, and this backtracking will not restore our ability to fully, freely and fearlessly serve the people of Texas so as long as the executive order remains in place,” CAIR-Texas said in a statement. “We look forward to seeing Governor Abbott and Attorney General Paxton in court and defeating this unconstitutional attack on the rights of all Texans.”

Washington, DC-based CAIR expressed similar sentiments.

“By trying to argue that the proclamation does not apply to CAIR-Texas and by arguing that the order raises a political question courts cannot resolve, Mr. Paxton has signaled the weakness of this proclamation,” it said. “We look forward to arguing that the judiciary has the power to decide whether the governor of a state can unilaterally label any American organization he dislikes a ‘terrorist group’ and impose sweeping punishments on that group without any process.”

Abbott’s proclamation described CAIR as a “successor organization” to the Muslim Brotherhood and noted the FBI called it a “front group” for “Hamas and its support network.” The document also outlined the history of the organizations and their historical associations with figures and networks tied to Hamas, an internationally designated terrorist group.

“The Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world,'” Abbott said in a statement while announcing the designations last month. “These radical extremists are not welcome in our state and are now prohibited from acquiring any real property interest in Texas.”

In the 2000s, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association'” of CAIR with Hamas.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.'”

CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities in southern Israel.

The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago in November 2023. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”