Three University of Florida political science professors have filed a federal lawsuit challenging a university policy that allowed administrators to initially bar the plaintiffs from testifying against the state’s new voting rights law.
The lawsuit on behalf of professors Sharon Wright Austin, Michael McDonald and Daniel Smith was filed Friday in the Northern District of Florida – the same day that the university’s president, W. Kent Fuchs, released a statement reversing the university’s denial of the professors’ requests to testify on behalf of voting-rights groups opposed to Senate Bill 90.
“I have also asked UF’s Conflicts of Interest Office to reverse the decisions on recent requests by UF employees to serve as expert witnesses in litigation in which the state of Florida is a party and to approve the requests regardless of personal compensation, assuming the activity is on their own time without using university resources,” Fuchs said in his statement.
At one point last week, Fuchs said they could testify provided no compensation changed hands.
In a statement emailed to the Florida Record, the professors’ attorneys emphasized the need to resolve the issue in court, since the school’s conflict-of-interest policy affecting professors’ outside activities remains in place.
“The lawsuit on behalf of three political science professors fires back at the brazen violation by the University of Florida of their First Amendment rights and academic freedom,” attorneys David O’Neil and Paul Donnelly said in the statement. “Despite reversing the immediate decision prohibiting the professors from testifying, the university has made no commitment to abandon its policy preventing academics from serving as expert witnesses when the university thinks that their speech may be adverse to the state and whatever political agenda politicians want to promote.”
The professors’ lawsuit stresses that public university professors should not be mouthpieces for any state administration and that the current university policy makes no distinction between faculty members’ paid outside activities and those that are unpaid.
“By discriminating against (the) plaintiffs based on the viewpoints they wish to express and by seeking to prevent them from offering expert testimony on issues of overwhelming public importance, the University of Florida violated plaintiffs First Amendment rights,” the complaint states.
A disapproval notice Smith received from the university in July explained the school’s position in no uncertain terms, according to the lawsuit.
“Outside activities that may pose a conflict of interest to the executive branch of the state of Florida create a conflict for the University of Florida,” the letter said.
The university is now forming a task force to review the conflict-of-interest policy, according to Fuchs. The university president is asking that the panel make a preliminary recommendation to him by Nov. 29