DeSantis signed the legislation into law in 2022, but parts were blocked in November of that year.<\/p>\n
The Washington Post\/Contributor\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
A 2022 Florida law that limits how professors can discuss race and gender in the classroom violates the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a 2-to-1 decision, the Court of the Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a lower court\u2019s decision<\/a> blocking the law. Free speech advocates had warned that the lawsuit against the law, known as the Stop WOKE Act, could demolish the tradition of academic freedom in American higher education if the judges sided with the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s lawyers argued<\/a>, essentially, that professors\u2019 speech in the classroom is government speech, so the state can restrict what they say. Other states<\/a> have made similar arguments as they enacted bans on diversity, equity and inclusion. An Alabama district judge ruled last August<\/a> that professors aren\u2019t protected by the First Amendment because their \u201cin-class instruction constitutes government speech.\u201d Those plaintiffs appealed to the 11th Circuit, and their case is still pending.<\/p>\n Judge Britt C. Grant, appointed by Trump in his first term, wrote that Florida\u2019s argument, that it has total control of classroom speech because it pays the professor\u2019s salary, was a \u201ca breathtaking 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<\/p>\n Grant added that \u201cthough the government has plenty of ways to promote its own viewpoint, puppeteering every university professor in the state is not one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n