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A circuit court judge has rejected requests by the New College of Florida Board of Trustees and the State University of Florida Board of Governors to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a law limiting arbitration in university employment disputes, the News Service of Florida reported.
The state law, passed last year, bars faculty members from filing grievances beyond the university president level. Plaintiff Hugo-Viera Vargas and the United Faculty of Florida, a state labor union, filed the lawsuit last year and revised it in March.
Viera-Vargas was one of five faculty members denied tenure by the New College Board of Trustees in April 2023, shortly after Republican governor Ron DeSantis appointed a swath of new conservative trustees to the board, instructing them to lead a conservative makeover of the small, public liberal arts institution. The faculty members had been approved for tenure at every other point in the process, but NCF trustees cited “extraordinary circumstances” as the reason for the denials.
Though Viera-Vargas appealed the denial, that effort was shot down by NCF president Richard Corcoran, a former Republican state lawmaker and DeSantis ally, who cited state law SB 266, which limits the ability of faculty to arbitrate grievances. Viera-Vargas then filed suit alleging “the arbitration ban curtails [his] academic freedom and forces him to engage in self-censorship.”
Leon County circuit court judge Leon Marsh rejected the request to dismiss his suit last week.
“Here, plaintiffs alleged the arbitration provisions in the collective bargaining agreement were bargained-for,” Marsh wrote in part of the decision. “This claim is more than plausible given that the collective bargaining agreement’s arbitration provisions go well beyond the requirements (of part of state law) by setting out the scope and procedures of any arbitration in detail.”
Neither New College officials nor the Florida Board of Governors responded to requests for comment from Inside Higher Ed on the judge’s ruling allowing the lawsuit to move forward.
