A federal appeals court has blocked Florida from enforcing the Stop WOKE Act in its public universities, ruling the state cannot control what professors say in the classroom.

A three-Judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday deemed the 2022 law an unconstitutional violation of free speech that treads on academic freedom, upholding a lower court order that has kept the law’s higher education provisions on ice since late 2022.

“There is nothing ordinary about the authority Florida seeks here,” reads the majority opinion by U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant, an appointee of President Donald Trump.

“The level of control that Florida demands — total — would be inconsistent not only with our Nation’s traditional constitutional protections for academic freedom, but also with the doctrines Florida cobbles together to support its suppression of disfavored viewpoints.”

When Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the controversial legislation — formally the Individual Freedom Act, with “WOKE” standing for “Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees” — he presented it as a check on left-wing indoctrination in Florida’s public colleges and universities.

“We are not going to use your tax dollars to teach our kids to hate this country or to hate each other,” the Republican Governor said at a signing ceremony in Hialeah.

The law barred instruction that “endorses” any of eight concepts related to race, color, national origin or sex, and put schools’ performance funding at risk — along with educators’ jobs — for violations.

But the Judges determined the legislation amounted to censorship of speech in an environment full of adults who can make up their own minds on political matters.

Grant called the state’s “salary-for-speech rule” 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.” Whether the state agrees with the ideas or not, she added, “in this context the First Amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves.”

Tuesday’s ruling affirms a November 2022 preliminary injunction from Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who memorably branded the law “positively dystopian.” It also follows the 11th Circuit’s 2024 decision striking down the Act’s restrictions on workplace diversity training in the Honeyfund case. The law’s K-12 provisions were not at issue here.

The ACLU, its Florida chapter, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and the law firm Ballard Spahr brought the challenge on behalf of a group of professors led by Florida A&M University College of Law professor LeRoy Pernell; it was consolidated with a companion case from University of South Florida academics. The plaintiffs cheered the decision.

“This ruling was worth the wait. It sets a strong precedent that higher education cannot be limited to the whims of politicians,” said Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program. “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 justice.”

Grant wrote the 2-1 decision on behalf of herself and U.S. Circuit Judge Charles Wilson, appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton.

Of note, U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa, a former Florida Supreme Court Justice and Trump appointee, dissented.

“To be clear, the First Amendment protects all viewpoints in the public square, whether they are conventional or controversial,” Lagoa wrote. “But it does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement.”

Attorney General James Uthmeier praised the dissent after the decision went public.

“Barbara Lagoa may be the best jurist in our country. She should be on SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States),” Uthmeier posted on X.

The state could ask the full 11th Circuit to rehear the case or seek review at the U.S. Supreme Court.