\u201cThere is nothing ordinary about the authority Florida seeks here,\u201d reads the majority opinion by U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant, an appointee of President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe level of control that Florida demands \u2014 total \u2014 would be inconsistent not only with our Nation\u2019s traditional constitutional protections for academic freedom, but also with the doctrines Florida cobbles together to support its suppression of disfavored viewpoints.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the controversial legislation \u2014 formally the Individual Freedom Act, with \u201cWOKE\u201d standing for \u201cWrongs to Our Kids and Employees\u201d \u2014 he presented it as a check on left-wing indoctrination in Florida\u2019s public colleges and universities.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not going to use your tax dollars to teach our kids to hate this country or to hate each other,\u201d the Republican Governor said at a signing ceremony in Hialeah.<\/p>\n The law barred instruction that \u201cendorses\u201d any of eight concepts related to race, color, national origin or sex, and put schools\u2019 performance funding at risk \u2014 along with educators\u2019 jobs \u2014 for violations.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Grant called the state\u2019s \u201csalary-for-speech rule\u201d a \u201cbreathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the State\u2019s own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry.\u201d Whether the state agrees with the ideas or not, she added, \u201cin this context the First Amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Tuesday\u2019s ruling affirms a November 2022 preliminary injunction from Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, who memorably branded the law \u201cpositively dystopian.\u201d It also follows the 11th Circuit\u2019s 2024 decision striking down the Act\u2019s restrictions on workplace diversity training in the Honeyfund case<\/a>. The law\u2019s K-12 provisions were not at issue here.<\/p>\n The ACLU<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThis ruling was worth the wait. It sets a strong precedent that higher education cannot be limited to the whims of politicians,\u201d said Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU\u2019s Racial Justice Program. \u201cAll students and educators deserve to have a free and open exchange about ideas without government control. Students can\u2019t fight racial discrimination that they don\u2019t see; training and instruction is key to empowering future leaders to pursue racial justice.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Of note, U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Lagoa, a former<\/a> Florida Supreme Court Justice and Trump appointee<\/a>, dissented.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be clear, the First Amendment protects all viewpoints in the public square, whether they are conventional or controversial,\u201d Lagoa wrote. \u201cBut it does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement.\u201d<\/p>\n Attorney General James Uthmeier praised the dissent after the decision went public.<\/p>\n \u201cBarbara Lagoa may be the best jurist in our country. She should be on SCOTUS (the Supreme Court of the United States),\u201d Uthmeier posted on X.<\/p>\n The state could ask the full 11th Circuit to rehear the case or seek review at the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal appeals court has blocked Florida from enforcing the Stop WOKE Act in its public universities, ruling…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332693,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[112024,137011,137299,137300,28,30,29,4260,412,137038],"class_list":["post-332692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-aclu-of-florida","tag-barbara-lagoa","tag-britt-grant","tag-chalres-wilson","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-james-uthmeier","tag-ron-desantis","tag-stop-woke-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/FL-Legislators-Digital-Banners-728x90_1.png\")
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