Appeals court blocks Florida limits on university instruction

A federal appeals court on Tuesday kept Florida from enforcing key higher education restrictions in Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Stop WOKE Act,” ruling that the state cannot bar public university professors from teaching or discussing certain concepts about race and gender in the classroom.

In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s preliminary injunction against the law’s higher education provisions. The majority said Florida’s argument that it could control the classroom speech of public employees, including college professors, amounted to “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.”

Judge Britt Grant, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Judge Charles Wilson, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton. Grant rejected the state’s position that professors’ classroom speech is government speech because the state pays their salaries.

“Because the government pays the professors’ salaries, Florida says, their speech is the state’s speech,” Grant wrote, according to The Guardian. “Emphatically no.”

Grant added that Florida sought to limit what professors and students could explore in academic settings. “Florida seeks to strip public university professors — and by extension their students — of the ability to fully engage with ideas that are, for better or for worse, very popular in some academic circles,” she wrote. “The State asks us to consider its rules a means of targeting discrimination. But hearing an idea you disagree with is not discrimination; it is an opportunity to come up with a better idea, or maybe even change your mind.”

The law, passed by the Florida Legislature and signed by DeSantis in 2022, is formally known as the Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act and also has been called the Individual Freedom Act. DeSantis promoted it as a measure against “indoctrination” in schools and universities. The provisions at issue barred professors from endorsing specified concepts associated with critical race theory, including a prohibition on instruction that causes students to “feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress” because of past actions committed by members of the same race, color, national origin or sex.

Supporters said the law was intended to stop teachings that promoted racial discrimination. Opponents, mostly Democrats in the Legislature, argued it would suppress honest instruction about slavery, the Jim Crow era and other parts of U.S. history.

The case was brought by university professors and backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. LeRoy Pernell, a Florida A&M University College of Law professor and one of the plaintiffs, welcomed 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 in a statement.

Civil rights and free speech groups also praised the ruling. Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund, called the law an “egregious” effort to force Florida’s public higher education system to adopt the views of those in power. Carrie McNamara, a staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, said the decision ensured that higher education is guided by “free speech, not government censorship.”

Judge Barbara Lagoa, also a Trump appointee and a former Florida Supreme Court justice appointed by DeSantis, dissented. She wrote that the First Amendment protects viewpoints in the public square but “does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement.” Lagoa said Florida was allowed to decide what its professors endorse in state classrooms.

Grant said courts should not police curriculum but must enforce the First Amendment. “And if the history of that Amendment tells us anything,” she wrote, “it is that the government cannot forbid what it perceives as heresy.”

Other parts of the Stop WOKE Act targeting workplace training on race, gender and sexual orientation issues have also been blocked by federal courts. The Guardian reported there was no immediate reaction to Tuesday’s ruling from the DeSantis administration or Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier.