Bio Professor Still Suing For Right To Visit Cuba

An outspoken Harvard professor says she and other people suing he government for the right to travel to Cuba are considering changing their tactics if they cannot get the Supreme Court to reverse a recent decision against them.

The high court ruled 5-4 last month that the Reagan Administration can legally bar private citizens from traveling to Cuba Professor of Biology. Ruth Hubbard and two other women sued President Reagan in 1982, because under restrictions he enacted that year they are not eligible to travel in Cuba.

Last week, the women's lawyer received an extension from Associate Justice William H Rehnquist, giving him until August 22 to file a petition for a rehearing of the case.

Such requests are rarely granted, but the lawyer. Leonard Boudin, said last week he felt the June 28 decision was so unusual he thought there was a good chance the court might be willing to take a second look at the case.

Hubbard and others connected with the case said they consider the right to travel freely so fundamental that they plan to continue fighting the case even if their request is dented.

Boudin said that if needed, he will reintroduce the suit in a lower court and force the government to prove that private individuals travelling to Cuba pose a threat to national security Hubbard's group contends that a 1977 law required the President to consult Congress and declare a state of emergency before restricting travel.

The Reagan ban was a response to alleged Cuban efforts to destabilize governments in Central America.

"Our point and our intent was not to make this a study four but to see how things were and then report back to the people in this country," Hubbard said. "We felt as U.S. citizens we ought to be able to do it."

She added that they wanted to see how a number of new laws regulating working conditions had affected Cuban women and "perhaps touch on some touchy areas such as gay rights."

"We wanted to be low key about it," she said. "It is our contention that the right to travel is a constitutionally guaranteed right--that you don't have to be a newspaper reporter, or a politician, or a football player, or a Cuban visiting relatives to go to Cuba."

Only Officials

Under the current law only professional researchers, news media, official visits and visits to relatives in Cuba are permitted.

Restrictions on travel to Cuba were first imposed by President Kennedy in 1963 under the authority of the Trading With the Enemy Act President, Carter, however, substantially eased the restrictions in 1977 and The number of Americans travelling to Cuba climbed quickly.

In the same year, Congress passed the International Emergency Powers Act, which requires the President to consult with Congress to declare a formal State of Emergency before restricting travel or other actions of Americans in a foreign country.

The Act did, however, include a grandfather clause which allowed any restrictions in place in July 1977 to remain. Since Carter had lifted the restrictions concerning Cuba on March 28, Hubbard's suit contended that Reagan's reinstatement of the restrictions was invalid and to impose them, he would have had to fontually declare a new state of emergency.

The court, however, disagreed, and said that the grandfather clause actually referred to "authorities" being exercised on July 1--in this case the authority to restrict travel--not specific prohibitions.

Boudin called the decision irrational and wholly without foundation. "There is no case that has so disregarded legislative intent," he said.

The lawyer is a veteran of right-to-travel laws, having argued several cases concerning the matter before the Supreme Court since 1958.

If the Court grants a rehearing he will stant his argument towards Justice John Paul Stephens, Boudin said. Since he needs only one vote to reverse the dicision, be said be though Stephens was the most likely to reverse himself.

In fact, he said, he had expected Stephens to rule in his favor all along and was surprised when he did not, although he was equally surprised when Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. ruled against the government.

"There is obviously something I failed to do to get through to [Stephens] and that is something I have to think through to see what I have to do to reach him," Boudin said