A Florida bill could stifle discussions of controversial topics in university classrooms, erode academic freedom and lead to more campus-related civil litigation, according to a group that fights to protect free speech on college campuses.
Joe Cohn, the legislative and policy director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has warned lawmakers that some of House Bill 233’s provisions raise constitutional issues and could lead to bad-faith legal claims. One provision would allow students to record professors in the classroom as part of preparations for civil or criminal proceedings.
“FIRE can’t support things that would dramatically chill speech on campus and threaten academic freedom,” Cohn told the Florida Record.
Attorney Joe Cohn
| Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
The bill can be seen as taking away certain legal protections from professors. Under current Florida law, audio and video recordings can only be made legally if all participants give consent. The bill, however, makes an exception in the university classroom environment.
The legislation raises the specter that such recordings could be made for bad-faith legal complaints, creating a disincentive for professors to engage students in discussion of controversial topics, according to Cohn.
“This language invites the kind of ‘gotcha’ politics at the heart of cancel culture,” he said in a recent blog post. “Will conservative students have to watch their words to avoid being reported to campus administrators? Will progressive faculty have to do the same to avoid being subject to complaints?”
The bill also allows professors to file civil lawsuits against people who publish such secret recordings. But that could be problematic because case law grants journalists the right to publish such materials, provided they don’t engage in illegal actions to obtain the recordings, according to Cohn.
“It certainly begs the question of the bill’s constitutionality, at least in that context,” he said.
In addition, the bill would require annual surveys of college communities to evaluate bias and freedom-of-expression issues.
“Legislators promoting the bill are coming from a place of good faith in my view, but they’re rushing something that should be handled more delicately,” Cohn said, adding that all stakeholders need to be properly consulted.
Ultimately, the provisions in the bill could be abused, with faculty members potentially losing their jobs due to recordings of their lectures and classroom discussions, he said. That, undoubtedly, would lead to more lawsuits by professors whose livelihoods are affected, according to Cohn.