Islamic Advocacy Group C.A.I.R. Must Turn Over Donor Lists, Federal Court Rules

Islamic Advocacy Group C.A.I.R. Must Turn Over Donor Lists, Federal Court Rules

The Islamic advocacy group CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) must disclose the sources of its funding, a federal district court has ruled in a defamation case against the organization.

The  lawsuit was brought by Lori Saroya, a former chapter head and employee at CAIR, who resigned in 2018. After she left, Saroya took to the internet, the court filing says, in social media posts accusing CAIR of creating a hostile work environment and financial mismanagement.

CAIR first sued Saroya for defamation over those online accusations in 2021, alleging they “falsely implied CAIR received funding from foreign governments and terrorists.”  It later voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit in 2022. But the legal dispute between the parties didn’t end there.

Rather than leave well enough alone, CAIR renewed the hostilities less than 10 days later in a press release suggesting it had won its case against Saroya on the merits. It said she was using lawfare to “demand the names of CAIR supporters who have donated to us,” and accused her of “cyberstalking,” a state and federal crime, the court noted this week.

That press release turned the tables. Now Saroya is suing CAIR for defamation over its accusations. And unlike CAIR’s earlier lawsuit, this one has legs.

As a nonprofit organization, CAIR isn’t ordinarily required to reveal its donors’ identities. But Saroya’s claims bring that information within the scope of discovery, federal Magistrate Judge David Schultz ruled this week.  Saroya alleges “eyebrow-raising financial mismanagement” in the lawsuit, including “hiding from its own Board the sources, nature and magnitude of massive foreign funding of CAIR.”

In its order granting her sweeping request for discovery, the court required CAIR to turn over the names of donors of $5,000 or more from 2014 through 2022, and documents showing contributions by “any individual or entity within, or any governmental unit of, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Kuwait between 2007 and 2014.”

That broad ruling, the court said, was “a self-inflicted wound occasioned by its own press release. In commenting on the merits of the 2021 lawsuit in the manner in which it did, CAIR resuscitated the very issues that had just been laid to rest.”

“CAIR’s press release has opened the door to litigating—and thus discovering—the merits of the 2021 litigation,” Judge Schultz wrote on Monday.

While it holds itself out as a Muslim civil rights organization, CAIR has long been accused of  sympathizing with Islamic terror, including Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Last year, CAIR executive director Nihad Awad celebrated Hamas’s October 7 attacks against Israel at an event for American Muslims for Palestine: “I was happy to see people breaking the siege…the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense,” he said.

In an interview with The Post, Saroya’s lawyer, Jeffrey Robbins, described Monday’s ruling as “the mother of all legal boomerangs”: “It will force CAIR to ‘turn over evidence about everything from fundraising practices, such as having raised money from foreign sources and concealed it;  whether it deceived donors; whether it mismanaged donor money; whether it retaliated against employees or threatened to retaliate against employees for raising concerns about sexual harassment or the like,’ he told the paper.

Meanwhile, although the court hasn’t set a deadline for discovery, it has scheduled a settlement conference for early next year. Now that it’s under order to open its books, CAIR could decide to settle—and close the case, only this time for good.

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