Florida's Cuba Student Travel Ban Busted

Monday September 8, 2008

Great news: Florida's Travel Act, designed to essentially eliminate academic travel to Cuba by Florida scholars, was shot down August 28 by U.S. District Court Judge Patricia Seitz, after the judge heard a lawsuit regarding the ban filed by the ACLU in 2006. Florida's Travel Act eliminated state funding and banned use of private funds for state school-planned educational travel and research by students, professors or researchers affiliated with Florida schools to Cuba and four other countries considered "state sponsors of terrorism" by the U.S. State Department, although the federal government does permit travel to Cuba for educational purposes (albeit while making such travel very difficult). The Florida Ledger noted in 2006: "There is little academic travel from Florida to the other countries on the list - North Korea, Iran, Libya, Syria and Sudan -- so it is clear that Cuba is the main target." The federal judge reportedly ruled that the part of the law banning use of private funds for travel was unconstitutional.

Florida ACLU Communications Director Brandon Hensler, who had called the Travel Act "political grandstanding," told About's Student Travel in 2006: "We fully expect to be victorious in this lawsuit because the law which was signed in by Governor Bush is not constitutional and we intend to prove that in a court of law." The ban had provoked outcry among scholars, prompting bill sponsor Miami Rep. David Rivera to respond, "Legislators just don’t pay too much attention to what academics think." Reached by the Miami Herald at the Republican National Convention, the politician reportedly said that Judge Steitz had "erred" and that he looked forward to an appeal.

Pleasure travel to Cuba by US citizens has, essentially, been illegal since the early 1960's, which was the last time Cuba may have overtly threatened the US (during the Cuban Missile Crisis) -- a trade embargo exists which basically means most US citizens can't technically spend a single cent that will "benefit" Cuba, like buying a plane ticket to Cuba or paying for the cab from the Cuban airport -- the embargo is why Cuban cigars are illegal in the US, as another for-instance. Students/scholars are one of only four groupings of US citizens that can legally travel to Cuba under certain conditions: since a change in federal policy by the current federal US administration in 2004, US scholars must generally show plans to stay on the island for 10 weeks in order to get a travel license from the US government, a requirement which eliminated many schools' Cuba study programs. (The other groupings are journalists employed full time with a news organization, a few religious groups traveling in missionary capacities, and those with relatives in Cuba (at US government-defined intervals).

The US government says it currently sanctions communist Cuba because the US officially "opposes (Cuba) President Fidel Castro's rule." Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake, who has co-sponsored H.R. 654 which would lift bans on Cuban travel, has said of US policy on Cuba, "Far from hastening democratic reforms, our current policy has given Fidel Castro a convenient scapegoat for his own regime’s failures."

It wouldn't be much of a leap from Florida's politically driven Travel Act to an attempt to eliminate study abroad in other countries should it suit another Florida politician's platform -- and the bill could have set an example to which other states might look in dictating what students can learn and/or see and where, even while using their own funds. Good riddance to Florida's Travel Act.

Read the timeline of Florida's Travel Act:

Read about fallout from Cuban travel:

Read more on Florida / Cuba travel politics: