A bill that would repeal the law that designated the main classroom building at the FSU College of Law as “B.K. Roberts Hall” was filed in the Florida Senate on January 7, 2022.
The measure if passed would remove BK Roberts name from the building and give FSU the ability to rename the building for someone else. The bill is known as Senate Bill 1858 and was filed by Sen. Randolph Bracy, D-Ocoee, who represents the northwest part of Orange County near Orlando.
The bill has not yet been assigned to a committee for a hearing, the most common next step toward passage once a bill is filed. The 2022 session of the legislature starts tomorrow January 11 and is scheduled to last until mid March.
Bills have been filed the past three years seeking to accomplish the same goal but none have passed the house and senate and been signed by the governor, the path necessary to become law. The legislature has the same members and leadership as last year when the leadership did not back the bill and it died in committee. Supporters hope the result will be different this year, but are prepared to keep fighting if unsuccessful and hope it will be easier to convince the new leadership that would take over the legislature after the fall 2022 elections.
Roberts is known as a segregationist judge who as Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court in the 1950s wrote several opinions that prevented Virgil Hawkins from enrolling in the University of Florida law school because he was black. In one particularly regrettable opinion, Roberts refused to admit Hawkins even after the US Supreme Court had outlawed segregation in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and later in 1956 tersely ordered Florida to let Hawkins enroll, stating there is no reason for delay. Roberts subsequent opinion finding more reasons for delay in defiance of the US Supreme Court is considered unethical since the judicial oath taken by all judges requires them to follow the orders of a higher court.
Roberts was instrumental in founding the FSU law school in the 1960s, which was the main reason the legislature put his name on the building in 1973. Recently, however, FSU has made clear it wants the name off the building. A university committee in 2018 unanimously recommended removing Roberts’ name, and FSU president at the time John Thrasher pushed the legislature to do so. The FSU student and faculty senates as well as the school board of trustees came out in favor of removing the name in 2020, and the law school faculty and administration (including the dean) wrote an open letter in 2020 asking the legislature to change the name, saying they were ashamed to go to work each day in a building named for Roberts, calling his name on the building “painful and offensive.” If Roberts name is ever removed from the building, FSU plans to honor his efforts to found the law school with a display inside the building.