TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit struck down parts of the Stop WOKE Act pertaining to higher education restrictions.
The higher education portions of the Stop WOKE Act created a broad set of speech restrictions banning certain viewpoints relating to race, color, sex and national origin, barring Florida educators from promoting or endorsing those disfavored ideas when instructing students.
The court ruled that the higher education part of the law was unconstitutional. In the 85-page opinion, the court examined the state’s control in public colleges and universities, which raised the notion that if the government pays a professor’s salary, it had total control over classroom speech.
The court disagrees, saying that “is not a blessed union.”
“Florida’s salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the State’s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry-classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth,” the opinion read.
The court said whether or not the state of Florida agrees or disagrees with the ideas does not matter and the First Amendment “trusts students to figure it out for themselves.”
In a press release from the Florida American Civil Liberties Union, the organization celebrated the decision, saying this ruling sets a strong precedent that higher education cannot be limited by politics.
“All students and educators deserve to have a free and open exchange about ideas without government control. Students can’t fight racial discrimination that they don’t see; training and instruction is key to empowering future leaders to pursue racial injustice,” Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, said.
A Florida A&M University professor, LeRoy Pernell, named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit also responded to the decision.
“We are thrilled the court has stopped the erasure of topics that have real implications for our students, allowing them to learn, discuss, and develop tools for combatting the complex issue of racism in our country without being gagged by those who would dictate that only state-approved thought may be promoted,” Pernell said.
A dissenting circuit judge said the task at hand is not to decide what the State should do but what it can do.
“The professor-plaintiffs are state employees, and the speech issue here occurs during their state-sponsored instruction in a course taken for credit by students enrolled in the State’s public universities,” the dissent read. “The State’s authority in this context is not the nullity the majority suggests.”
The dissenting opinion said agreeing or disagreeing with Florida that the viewpoints at issue here constitute racial discrimination is not necessary.
“We need only acknowledge that the State is allowed to decide what is endorsed by its professors in its own classrooms,” the dissent read.
The “Stop WOKE Act” was signed into law in 2022, putting in new guidelines involving race-based discussion in businesses and schools.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals previously said the part of the law targeting businesses is unconstitutional.
You can read the full opinion here.
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