Florida College Bars Professors From Testifying Against Republican Government

The University of Florida is blocking three professors from testifying as expert witnesses in a lawsuit against the Republican-controlled Florida state government over their new, repressive voting laws. This is an unusual move for a university, and now experts are concerned about the chilling effect this could have on free speech for college professors and possible even other professionals who are used as expert witnesses in lawsuits. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The University of Florida is blocking three of their professors from serving as expert witnesses in a lawsuit against the state of Florida, challenging their regressive voter suppression law that was passed earlier this year by the Republican controlled Florida government. This is an unprecedented move by the University of Florida to block these individuals from serving as expert witnesses in this lawsuit. Now, I know the average person out there has never worked on a major lawsuit, but let me just explain after 17 years of experience working with the best lawyers in the country, how this happens. When you have a major lawsuit, it doesn't matter if it's, you know, a civil rights issue like the Florida voting law, if it's a major pharmaceutical case, if it's an environmental case, what the plaintiffs do, the plaintiff's lawyers, they go out and they find experts in these areas. People that can testify to the dangers of whatever it is that is being sued over. Again, environmental dangerous, pharmaceutical dangerous. These people help explain the science. These people help explain the real world ramifications of what's going on and they are absolutely vital for the success of lawsuits.

And frequently they reach out to college professors because in many instances, these people know it better than anybody else. And that's what the plaintiffs here suing the state of Florida did. They had three professors down at the University of Florida, political science professors Daniel Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Austin. And the college says, no, you can't do it. You can't do it because, you know, we don't want to off the state of Florida because, you know, we're a Florida university and we don't want them to get mad at us. Now I'm paraphrasing basically what they said, but that's what it is. The University of Florida is scared that something may happen to their funding. They're scared that they might somehow get dragged into a political mess if three of their professors get paid because that's what they claim is part of the problem. We don't want you to get paid to be an expert witness. So you can't do it at all. All right. What if they did it for free? Well, then you actually run into issues with the lawsuit itself for these people volunteering their time and not getting compensated for it and the University understands this.

The University of Florida is scared. The University of Florida is acting cowardly and the University of Florida could in fact be jeopardizing the free speech rights of not just professors at their own university, but across the state and maybe even across the nation, because if they are successful with this and these professors are not allowed to testify because the school objects to it, this could have a chilling effect on lawsuits all across the country. Not just against voter suppression laws either. We could see major pharmaceutical cases swing the other way because colleges don't want to off the pharmaceutical industry. Environmental cases, oh, we don't want to make the, the corporate polluters mad. They give us endowments. We have a wing named after them. Don't think that major corporations aren't paying attention to this too, because they absolutely are. And whatever they can do to gain an edge because they know litigation is always right around the corner.