University of Alabama Returns Millions to Top Donor

Alabama’s law school faculty are not alone in feeling that they are unjustly suffering the collateral damage from the ongoing abortion battles playing out across the country. In neighboring Georgia, some workers in the state’s burgeoning film and television industry have said they fear their livelihoods will suffer if Hollywood companies carry out threats to shun the state as a way to punish lawmakers for passing a strict anti-abortion bill.

Like the Alabama law, the Georgia legislation, signed last month by Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, has not taken effect. Although both measures face steep court challenges, abortion opponents have stated that they hope one of the laws, or others like it, will ignite a successful legal challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Stacey Abrams, a prominent Democrat and former Georgia candidate for governor, has been trying to convince Hollywood not to boycott the state, arguing that leaving Georgia would only harm rank-and-file industry workers. Instead, she has been trying to persuade Hollywood executives to put money behind candidates and groups that oppose the law.

In Alabama, top officials in the state’s university system have also pushed back at the idea that the squabble with their wealthy donor had anything to do with the abortion law. In a memo sent to the board of trustees the day before Mr. Culverhouse raised the issue of abortion, Finis E. St. John IV, the system chancellor, and Sid J. Trant, the board’s secretary and general counsel, said that Mr. Culverhouse had “complained about the law school’s administration” of his gift.

At one point, the memo said, Mr. Culverhouse had asked for the return of $10 million of the $21.5 million he had already given. The chancellor and board secretary recommended returning all of the money to Mr. Culverhouse and taking his name off the school.

Soon after Friday’s vote, Kellee Reinhart, a university system spokeswoman, issued a statement saying that the board’s decision was a “direct result of Mr. Culverhouse’s ongoing attempts to interfere in the operations of the Law School.”