Florida's biggest public university just canceled its own College Republicans.
Now interim President Donald Landry is facing a federal lawsuit he almost certainly cannot win.
University of Florida administrators deactivated the entire College Republicans chapter over one member's alleged off-campus gesture – without citing a single university policy, without giving the students a hearing, and 48 hours after the group hosted the largest political candidate event on campus in nearly a decade.
How Viewpoint Discrimination Against Conservative Students Got UF Sued
Attorney Anthony Sabatini filed a federal First Amendment lawsuit Monday on behalf of the UF College Republicans, naming interim President Donald Landry directly.
The lawsuit states that UF "punitively deactivated and shut down the UFCR, in response to alleged viewpoints expressed by a member of UFCR, and in an effort to silence the club and chill its future speech."
Zero university policies were violated.
The university didn't even give the chapter a chance to respond before pulling the plug.
That's not antisemitism enforcement – that's a public institution punishing students for speech it didn't like, without due process, without a rule violation, and at the request of an outside organization that had no authority over this chapter.
https://twitter.com/AnthonySabatini/status/2033587580877394236?s=20
The UFCR is affiliated with College Republicans of America – not the Florida Federation of College Republicans, the group that allegedly triggered the deactivation.
CRA Chairman William Donahue said publicly that FFCR "lied" to the university about its authority over the chapter.
That's the whole case – a private outside organization that doesn't even govern this club made claims to the university, the university acted on those claims without verifying authority or giving the students a hearing, and now a taxpayer-funded Florida public university is in federal court defending viewpoint discrimination.
The Last Time UF Tried to Ban a Student Group Over Free Speech
In 2023, DeSantis ordered UF to deactivate its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter after the national SJP endorsed Hamas's October 7 attacks.
The university cooperated.
Students filed First Amendment lawsuits.
The university backed down – because on a public campus, the First Amendment applies whether the administration agrees with the speech or not.
The Supreme Court settled this in Rosenberger v. University of Virginia in 1995 and has reaffirmed it repeatedly since: public universities cannot deactivate student organizations based on the viewpoint those organizations express.
UF just did exactly that – and they did it without even pretending to follow their own policies.
James Fishback, the Republican gubernatorial candidate whose event the chapter hosted 48 hours before the shutdown, called the decision "disgraceful."
"In 2023, it was Students for Justice in Palestine. Today, it's College Republicans," Fishback wrote. "As Governor, I will defend the First Amendment rights of all citizens."
He's right.
https://twitter.com/j_fishback/status/2033627880173752772?s=20
And so is Sabatini – this time UF doesn't even have the pretense of terrorism concerns to hide behind.
Cancel Culture on Campus Just Came for College Republicans
One UFCR member apparently made a Nazi salute – and screenshots from a group chat showed another writing that Hitler "didn't do enough."
Those two members should have faced individual consequences.
Instead, Donald Landry – the interim president of a taxpayer-funded Florida university – nuked the entire organization.
He punished dozens of students who had nothing to do with those statements, on the word of an organization that has no governing authority over this chapter, without giving anyone a chance to respond.
That's not antisemitism enforcement.
That's a bureaucrat using antisemitism as cover to shut down a Republican political club that just hosted a candidate he apparently didn't like.
The federal judge in this case will look at Healy v. James – the 1972 Supreme Court ruling establishing that public universities cannot deny recognition to student groups based on associated viewpoints.
Landry has no policy argument.
He has no jurisdictional argument – the FFCR doesn't govern this chapter, and the lawsuit makes clear UF never verified that it did before acting.
What he has is a decision made under political pressure that will cost Florida taxpayers money in legal fees and almost certainly end with the club reinstated anyway.
The only question is how much damage Landry does to his own university before a federal judge forces his hand.
Sources:
- Rachel Wolf, "University of Florida discriminated against College Republicans chapter, attorney claims," Fox News, March 17, 2026.
- Associated Press, "College Republicans sue University of Florida's president over deactivation of its chapter," March 17, 2026.
- WCJB Staff, "UF College Republicans files suit to block University of Florida from deactivating student group," WCJB, March 16, 2026.
- Union-Bulletin Staff, "University of Florida sued by College Republicans for deactivating club over Nazi salute," March 17, 2026.
- WUSF Staff, "DeSantis, university system dispute free speech lawsuits brought by USF, UF students," WUSF, December 30, 2023.
