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Fort Lauderdale Marriott Coral Springs Hotel & Convention Center. {Marriott}

A federal judge has dismissed a civil rights lawsuit filed by the South Florida Muslim Federation, ruling that the group did not prove it was discriminated against based on race when the Coral Springs Marriott canceled its 2024 annual conference, according to court records.

Critics of the event said it was slated to include several speakers with a history of spreading antisemitic rhetoric and glorifying the terrorist organization Hamas, leading to fierce backlash in Parkland and Coral Springs’ Jewish communities.

SFMF’s suit, filed in September 2024, alleged racial discrimination and blamed the cancellation on Marriott, the city of Parkland, Mayor Rich Walker, Parkland’s Chamber of Commerce, its president Doug Eaton, Republican activist Joe Kaufman, and the right-wing think tank Middle East Forum.

U.S. District Court Judge Raag Singhal found SFMF did not provide enough evidence to support its claims and threw out its lawsuit on May 12, 2025, according to federal court filings.

Specifically, Singhal said the “pressure campaign” described by SFMF as leading to the event’s cancellation “had nothing to do with race,” and ruled the claims in the suit were not actionable under the laws cited by SFMF.

“Not one of the alleged discriminatory statements concerned race and the [lawsuit] fails to allege any facts that would plausibly support the conclusion that the defendants discriminated on the basis of race,” Singhal wrote. “The fact that some members of SFMF’s group belonged to non-white racial groups is coincidental and not at all related to the alleged discriminatory actions.”

Singhal added that “SFMF’s existence and purpose is based on the religion of Islam, not the racial characteristics of its members.”

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According to Singhal’s ruling, SFMF is an umbrella organization that represents “South Florida Muslim entities, including Islamic centers, schools, and other similar community organizations, and over 200,000 Muslims in South Florida.”

The planned conference, scheduled for Jan 12 and 13, 2024, at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Coral Springs Hotel & Convention Center, came under scrutiny after the Middle East Forum published a Jan. 2, 2024 article written by Kaufman with the headline, “Coral Springs Marriott Set to Host Florida Gathering of Hamas Sympathizers.”

Kaufman’s article described SFMF as “representing the [Islamic] faith’s most radical Islamist sect and movements” and said the scheduled gathering would “feature hateful speeches from some of the region’s most controversial Islamist voices,” including people “who regularly traffic in bigotry and possess alarming ties to foreign terrorists.”

Kaufman’s article sparked concern about the conference in Parkland and Coral Springs, where Jewish community members, along with some business and political leaders, said several SFMF conference speakers had trafficked in antisemitism and glorification of Hamas. Less than three months earlier, the terror group had carried out its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.

According to Kaufman’s article, keynote speakers at SFMF’s conference would have included Lobna Mulla, whose past social media posts included maps erasing Israel and glorifying Hamas terrorists; Naima Khan-Ghany, who was ousted from committees she served on for Broward County Public Schools due to alleged antisemitism (she later hosted a panel at SFMF’s January 2025 conference, held at the city-owned Coral Springs Performing Arts Center); social media influencer Yasemin Kanar, who had made antisemitic statements about Hollywood being controlled by “Zionist Jews” spreading “pedophilia”; and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders have trafficked in antisemitism and justified the October 7 attacks.

SFMF alleged that several statements in Kaufman’s article were false and defamatory in its now-dismissed lawsuit. Its leaders previously deemed efforts to cancel the event and Marriott’s decision “Islamophobic.”

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Author Profile

Kevin Deutsch

Kevin Deutsch is an award-winning journalist and author of two nonfiction books. He covers general assignment news and Jewish community issues for Talk Media. He has also worked as a staff writer at The Miami Times, the Rio Grande SUN, the New York Daily News, Newsday, The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, The Riverdale Press, and Bronx Justice News.