Peloni: A significant win! Well done MEF!
A Federal Judge Has Dismissed All Claims Brought by the South Florida Muslim Federation Against the Middle East Forum and Its Allies for the Second Time
News from the Middle East Forum | MEF | Jan 28, 2026
Image by Blogtrepreneur – Legal Gavel, CC BY 2.0, Wikipedia
A federal judge has dismissed all claims brought by the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF) against the Middle East Forum (MEF) and its allies for the second time, delivering a decisive legal victory that vindicates MEF’s decades-long efforts to expose Islamist organizations operating in America.
U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal of the Southern District of Florida dismissed SFMF’s amended complaint on January 27, 2026, after previously dismissing the original complaint in May 2025. The court found that SFMF—an umbrella organization representing Muslim entities in South Florida—failed to establish standing for injunctive relief and, critically, failed to demonstrate racial discrimination under 42 U.S.C. § 1981. The racial discrimination claim was dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled.
The lawsuit arose after MEF and local community leaders brought attention to SFMF’s activities and the Coral Springs Marriott decided to cancel SFMF’s January 2024 conference. MEF had published research documenting SFMF’s ties to radical Islamist movements and individuals with connections to foreign terrorist organizations. The hotel cited “significant undesirable interest” in canceling the event.
In a notable passage, Judge Singhal rejected SFMF’s attempt to conflate religious identity with racial discrimination: “To accept SFMF’s premise that prejudice against a Muslim community group is akin to racial and ethnic discrimination, the Court would need to equate MENASA [Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia] ethnicity with the Muslim religion. The two are not the same.” The judge further noted that “not one of the alleged discriminatory statements concerned race” and that SFMF’s religious affiliation was “coincidental and not at all related to the alleged discriminatory actions.”
Bravo