Professors' challenge to Florida Cuba travel law

Lehigh Acres News Star/

TALLAHASSEE - The U.S. Supreme Court could decide this week whether to hear a challenge to a 2006 Florida law that blocks funding for university professors to travel to Cuba or other countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism.

The Florida International University faculty senate and individual professors challenged the law, contending that it improperly infringes on the federal government's power to make decisions about foreign policy.

"As Congress and the president work to develop a response to current global events that harmonizes the nation's self-interest with the democratic ideals it promotes, the treatment of terrorism and the individuals and nations sponsoring it is at the core of America's foreign policy,'' attorneys for the professors wrote in a brief. "… That the Florida Legislature passed the travel act (state law) to take a harder line against Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria than the president or Congress have taken impermissibly blunts the consequences of the president's discretionary authority to manage relations with the listed states."

But the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2010 upheld the law. In a brief to the Supreme Court, state attorneys wrote that professors are "not constitutionally entitled to demand state support for their academic travel simply because federal law permits such travel."

"Indeed, a state's decision to support academic travel to one country rather than another, and to take into consideration the safety of its faculty and students in making such decisions, does not present an important federal question that should be settled by this court,'' the brief said.

Supreme Court justices are scheduled Thursday to consider whether to hear the case and will make an announcement later. The court receives thousands of petitions a year for it to take cases, but agrees to hear only a fraction. If the court agrees to hear the Florida case, it would start a months-long process that would involve arguments and an ultimate ruling on the professors' challenge.