Florida Republican student group sues university after suspension over Nazi salute post

A dispute among student Republican groups in Florida over alleged antisemitic behavior is heading for a courtroom after a chapter at the state’s flagship university was suspended for an online post featuring two people giving Nazi salutes.On Saturday, University of Florida (UF) blocked campus operations of the school’s College Republicans after the group’s state leadership said it had disbanded the chapter for engaging in “a pattern of conduct that violated its rules and values, including a recent antisemitic gesture”.The chapter responded Monday by filing a free speech lawsuit against UF leadership, arguing that the action violated the constitutional first amendment rights of a member engaging in an off-campus activity.In an X post, the chapter also suggested its suspension was tied to its hosting of an event with James Fishback, a controversial far-right candidate for Florida governor who has angered more moderate Republicans with his extremist views.A separate but similar incident unfolded earlier in March at Florida International University after the Miami Herald published leaked group chat messages from a number of its students, including an official of the Miami-Dade Republican party, featuring racist, sexist, antisemitic and homophobic comments.The Guardian reported in November on a surge of antisemitism investigations on US campuses after the 7 October 2023 terrorist attacks by Hamas and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.In a statement announcing the UF group’s suspension, Donald Landry, the university’s interim president, said the school “has emphatically supported its Jewish community and remains committed to preventing and addressing antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and harassment”.He said UF would work with the Florida Federation of College Republicans (FFCR) to restore the chapter under new student leadership when it was ready to do so.In the social media post announcing it had retained legal counsel to fight its termination, the campus-level chapter said UF was talking to the wrong umbrella group.“They cited the FFCR, an organization that we are not a part of that has no authority over our chapter. We are proud members of a different organization,” it said, referring to a group called the College Republicans of America (CRA).It reposted a letter from the CRA chair, Will Donahue, calling on Republicans to “refocus” on fighting political opponents rather than each other.“A political movement does not survive by devouring its own,” Donahue wrote.The CRA recently appointed far-right social media personality Kai Schwemmer, a close associate of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, as its political director. It comes as college rightwing groups further test the boundary of free speech and racial hatred after the killing of Charlie Kirk, the conservative campus activist, at a university speaking engagement in Utah in September.Several elected Florida Republicans have called out the students’ behavior and said there is no place in the party for antisemitism or racism.“The individuals in the group chat have exposed how profoundly misaligned their beliefs are to the views of the Republican party of Florida,” state senators Ileana Garcia, Alexis Calatayud and Ana Maria Rodriguez said in a joint statement after the FIU episode.“The statements made by those individuals clarify their moral and intellectual corruption and demonstrate a complete misalignment with core, shared American values.”The Miami Herald reported that the UF chapter’s lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Gainesville. It said the university unlawfully “deactivated and shut down” the club in retaliation for protected political speech and asked for an emergency order to restore its campus access.The UF chapter’s attorney, Anthony Sabatini, a former Republican state representative, told the Herald that the group was being targeted for promoting an “aggressive America First agenda”.“These guys are … more hard-edged, what I would call the true right, and they wanted to punish them for that,” he said.Fishback, in a post on X, called UF’s action deactivating the chapter “a disgusting attack on the first amendment” – and said he stood with “any student group (on the right or left) whose free speech rights are under threat”.A UF spokesperson said the university would not comment on pending litigation.