Pro-Palestine Students Rejoice After Florida Bill to Axe Tuition Aid Dies

As tensions at South Florida universities reached a fever pitch last winter amid Gaza war protests, a Florida House bill plodding through the Capitol looked to crack down on Hamas sympathizers on campus. The legislation sought to strip students of scholarships, tuition discounts, and grant money if they were found to be promoting Hamas — which the bill’s sponsor touted as a means of curbing anti-Semitic rhetoric and endorsement of violence.

“This bill is to make sure that people feel safe and respected on their campus, and I can’t say that we have that right now,” Florida Rep. John Temple, sponsor of HB 465, said in January.

For pro-Palestine students on campus, the legislation stood to have the opposite effect, as they feared they would be lumped in as Hamas supporters and lose their financial aid for speaking out against Israeli military action.

Florida International University (FIU) senior Zuhra Akhtar told New Times in February that Arab and Muslim students on campus were on edge this semester, fearing that voicing support for Palestinians would lead to castigation and labeling as a terrorist sympathizer.

“How many times have we been called Hamas supporters?” Akhtar said. “Just because we actively speak against the atrocities in Palestine and call for a ceasefire, we are called Hamas supporters. I think it’s a type of post-9/11 era Islamophobia. I haven’t felt this kind of hostility in a long time.”

With the legislative session ending today and HB 465 dying a quiet death in committee, FIU students opposed to the Israeli military campaign say they are breathing a sigh of relief that they can protest without the prospect of financial reprisal as the war rages on.

“The fact that we won’t get stomped out financially just for expressing our views and acting on them non-violently is a huge win for students,” FIU student Yuri Labrada tells New Times.

The last action on the bill was a “favorable” vote by the Postsecondary Education & Workforce Subcommittee before it was sent to the Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee. In addition to revoking in-state tuition discounts for Florida residents, HB 465 would have blocked state financial aid, including fee waivers, loans, scholarships, and grants, for students deemed to be promoting groups listed by the U.S. Department of State as foreign terrorist organizations, including, “but not limited to, Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad.” The legislation also would have mandated that Florida universities report to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security information about students on an F-1 visa who were found to support Hamas.

The bill stalled in the higher education subcommittee in February. Its companion bill, SB 470 in the Florida Senate, fizzled out as well.

Late last year, action by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration to penalize perceived Hamas sympathizers on campus appeared to have ample political traction as the governor and the state university system in October moved to deactivate university chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The governor, who was vying for the Republican presidential nomination at the time, said at a debate in Miami, “We’re not gonna use tax dollars to fund jihad.”

The move came after the national SJP organization issued an internal “toolkit” that praised Hamas activity, saying, “The resistance in Gaza launched a surprise operation against the Zionist enemy which disrupted the very foundation of Zionist settler society.”

In a lawsuit over the threatened deactivation, a University of Florida chapter of SJP argued it was independent of the national organization and that the state university system’s threats violated the First Amendment. Meanwhile, free speech groups spoke out against the directive, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which said, “If it goes unchallenged, no one’s political beliefs will be safe from government suppression.”

With the prospect of long-term litigation over free-speech rights looming, Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the State University System of Florida, appeared to walk back the action. He said in mid-November that there was “potential personal liability for university actors who deactivate the student registered organization.”

HB 465 continued moving through the Florida House of Representatives in the shadow of similar constitutional challenges. If litigated on free speech grounds, the bill faced federal courts’ potential evaluation under strict scrutiny, a difficult-to-overcome legal standard applied to content- or viewpoint-based restrictions on speech.

FIU law student Norhan Saber told New Times in February that the legislation amounted to “a complete violation of our First Amendment” rights.

“It doesn’t matter what students are organizing for. They should always be allowed to organize on campus,” said Saber. “It’s really just a way to repress students to scare them further.”

Members of the subcommittee where HB 465 was referred did not respond to New Times‘ request for comment on why the legislation was not taken up. The Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee had meetings on February 6 and 13 but did not take action on HB 465.

Temple maintained in a public statement, “Florida’s commitment is to stand with Israel and not be complicit to foreign terrorist organizations making postsecondary institutions a place for activism.”

FIU had seen frequent protest activity and pro-Palestine events on campus this semester — with several events organized by the local SJP and supported by Young Democratic Socialists of America. The last major demonstration took place on February 15, when students hosted a sit-in, protesting the raid on Rafah, an event met with heavy law enforcement presence from FIU police, the Miami Police Department, the Sweetwater Police Department, and Florida State Troopers.

SJP at FIU said it is planning another event tonight at the Graham Center to protest the invitation of Israeli military officers to speak at the university. The social media post refers to the Israeli Defense Force members as members of the “Israeli Occupational Forces,” and calls them “accomplices to genocide.”

Protests on campus are likely to continue now that ceasefire negotiations gained little traction.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday pledged to follow through on the Israeli military offensive in Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million people are residing, many of whom were displaced by military action to the north.

In response to a Hamas attack in October 2023 that killed an estimated 1,200 people, Israel has carried out a sweeping military campaign that destroyed most of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and killed more than 30,000 people, according to Palestinian health officials.

“Whoever tells us not to act in Rafah is telling us to lose the war, and that will not happen,” Netanyahu said at a graduation for military recruits.

SJP chapters at other large universities remained suspended as of late February.

The New York Civil Liberties Union threatened to sue Columbia University last month if it did not reverse the suspension of its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. The civil rights group noted that while Columbia is a private university not bound by First Amendment issues inherent at public institutions, students planned to argue the suspension did not follow the university’s disciplinary protocols.