Florida Legislative Investigation Committee

The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (commonly known as the Johns Committee) was established by the Florida Legislature in 1956, during the era of the Second Red Scare and the Lavender Scare. Like the more famous anti-Communist investigative committees of the McCarthy period in the United States Congress, the Florida committee undertook a wide-ranging investigation of allegedly subversive activities by academics, civil rights groups, especially the NAACP, and suspected communist organizations.

After failing to find communist ties to Florida civil rights organizations, it focused on homosexuals, who were widely believed to pose a threat to both youth and national security. Students were expelled and faculty fired or forced to resign from Florida universities, especially the University of Florida.

Charley Johns, who chaired the committee, led the Pork Chop Gang, a group of rural legislators who in the era of gerrymandering dominated the Florida Legislature. Their power only disappeared with reapportionment under the Florida Constitution of 1968.

The Sun-Sentinel reported in 2019 that the committee "persecuted civil rights leaders, university professors, college students, public school teachers and state employees for imagined offenses against redneck sensibilities.... Niceties like due process or the right to counsel or civil liberties were ignored.... They employed entrapment and blackmail." It said that the Johns Committee resembled the contemporaneous Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, "but the Sovereignty Commission, bad as it was, lacked the Johns Committee's unrelenting cruelty". The Florida Legislative Investigation Committee has been described as Florida's version of McCarthyism and a Florida version of the House Un-American Activities Committee.