Hugh Culverhouse Jr.: Liberal Scumbag of the Week

Claim To Fame: prominent tax lawyer and former owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League.

Why He's the Liberal Scumbag of the Week: for urging businesses and prospective students to boycott the University of Alabama over the state's new abortion law. For that fascist move, the university's board of trustees did the right thing and voted to return a $21.5 million gift from Culverhouse Jr. — the school's biggest donor — and take his name off its law school.

A week after Coral Gables philanthropist Hugh Culverhouse Jr. called for students to boycott the University of Alabama over the passage of a law banning nearly all abortions in the state, the university’s board of trustees voted Friday to give back a $21.5 million gift and remove his name from its law school.

Culverhouse, a top donor at the university and former Miami prosecutor, said the board decision was retaliation for “exercising free speech” and accused the university of lying to the public. The university stated Culverhouse’s “ongoing attempts to interfere in the operations of the Law School” led to the unanimous vote to return his money and cut ties with the donor. 

Culverhouse said the issues he had with the law school, about decreasing enrollment numbers, had been resolved before he called for a boycott. His $25.6 million pledge to the law school in 2018 was considered the largest gift in the university’s history, the school said at the time. The university wired $21.5 million — the amount he has paid so far — to him Friday.

On May 29, Culverhouse issued a call for a boycott of the state’s economy following the passage of the Alabama Human Life Protection Act, which would ban abortion except for when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. The bill would make performing an abortion a felony in almost all cases. Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed the legislation into law on May 16, and it is scheduled to go into effect in six months barring a successful legal appeal. 

While Culverhouse did not attend the University of Alabama, his parents did. The university’s business school is named after his father, the original owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team.

“It hurts,” he said of seeing workers remove his name from outside the law school. “It’s sad.”