Supreme Court may review Florida academic travel ban law
Court may hear the legal challenges to law that prohibits funding for academic and research travel to nations considered “sponsors of terrorism,” among them Cuba.
By Lesley Clark
From The Miami Herald
WASHINGTON — A controversial Florida law that restricts state colleges and universities from traveling to Cuba and other “terrorist states” could be headed before the U.S. Supreme Court for review.
The high court on Monday invited the Obama administration to file a brief outlining the United States’ stance on the 2006 law, which bars public schools and universities in Florida from using state money — or tapping into their budgets — for travel to countries considered by the federal government to be “sponsors of terrorism.’’ The countries include Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the faculty at the University of South Florida, the University of Florida and Florida International University in March had asked the high court to review the law.
The state law was declared unconstitutional in 2008 by U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz in Miami, but it was upheld last September by a federal appeals court in Atlanta.
