{"id":28620,"date":"2019-01-10T22:23:21","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T22:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28620"},"modified":"2019-01-10T22:23:21","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T22:23:21","slug":"lawsuit-marylands-anti-bds-law-chills-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=28620","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit: Maryland’s anti-BDS law ‘chills’ free speech"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Maryland’s ban on contracting with businesses that boycott Israel<\/a> tramples on the First Amendment rights of a software engineer who advocates for Palestinians, a Muslim civil rights group claims in a lawsuit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) federal lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, seeks to block the state from enforcing an executive order<\/a> that Maryland Governor Larry Hogan signed in October 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaryland\u2019s ban on contracting with anyone who participates in such boycotts constitutes viewpoint discrimination that chills constitutionally-protected political advocacy in support of Palestine,” the lawsuit states.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The order requires contractors to certify in writing that they don’t boycott Israel.<\/a> The group’s suit claims the order has an unconstitutional chilling effect on First Amendment-protected political advocacy supporting the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

CAIR says 25 other states have enacted measures similar to Maryland’s, through legislation or executive orders.<\/p>\n

CAIR attorney Gadeir Abbas said other federal lawsuits have challenged measures in Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas and Texas.<\/p>\n

The group sued Hogan and state Attorney General Brian Frosh on behalf of software engineer Syed Saqib Ali, a former state legislator.<\/p>\n

Ali’s lawsuit says the order bars him from bidding for government software program contracts because he supports boycotts of businesses and organisations that “contribute to the oppression of Palestinians”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Speech and advocacy related to the Israel-Palestine conflict<\/a> is core political speech on a matter of public concern entitled to the highest levels of constitutional protection,” the suit says.<\/p>\n

Raquel Coombs, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, said the attorney general hadn’t seen the suit and doesn’t comment on pending litigation.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for Hogan’s office said, “We are confident that our executive order is completely consistent with the First Amendment and will be upheld in court.”<\/p>\n

‘End around’\u00a0<\/h2>\n

Ali, a resident of Gaithersburg, served as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates from 2007 to 2011 and represented Montgomery County as a Democrat.<\/p>\n

He accused Hogan, a Republican, of making an “end around” the legislature by signing the executive order after lawmakers repeatedly rejected several anti-BDS bills targeting the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.<\/p>\n

“This is unacceptable, and Larry Hogan should know that our rights will not be stricken by him,” Ali said at a news conference in Baltimore.<\/p>\n

The executive order says a boycott based on religion, national origin or ethnicity is discriminatory. A business boycott of Israel and its territories “is not a commercial decision made for business or economic reasons,” it adds.<\/p>\n

“Contracting with business entities that discriminate make the State a passive participant in private-sector commercial discrimination,” the order says.<\/p>\n

In December, the Arkansas Times weekly newspaper sued to block a similar measure.<\/p>\n

That state law, which took effect in August 2017, requires contractors to reduce their fees by 20 percent if they don’t sign a pledge not to boycott Israel.<\/p>\n

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge’s office argued that boycotting Israel is not activity protected by the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

“It is neither speech, nor is it conduct that is inherently expressive, nor associational activity that is afforded constitutional protection,” wrote attorneys representing Rutledge’s office.<\/p>\n

In December, CAIR filed a motion on behalf of a Texas speech pathologist who was fired after she refused to sign a statement pledging that she does not and will not boycott Israel or its settlements in occupied Palestinian territory.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This week, the US Senate blocked<\/a> a bill aimed at the BDS movement from moving forward due to the partial government shutdown. Politicians have vowed to bring the bill up again when the shutdown ends.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maryland’s ban on contracting with businesses that boycott Israel tramples on the First Amendment rights of a software engineer who advocates for Palestinians, a Muslim civil rights group claims in a lawsuit.\u00a0 The Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) federal lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, seeks to block the state from enforcing an executive order that Maryland…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":28621,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}