A federal appeals court Tuesday kept in place a district court’s preliminary injunction on Florida’s law banning “woke” instruction at public universities.
A 2-1 ruling from the three-judge panel on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found Florida’s assertion it could control the speech of its employees, including college professors, to be “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 opinion and was joined by Judge Charles Wilson, an appointee of President Bill Clinton.
“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,” Grant 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 case was brought by a set of university professors and backed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.
“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,” LeRoy Pernell, a Florida A&M University College of Law professor, and one of the instructors who brought the lawsuit, said in a released statement.
Dr. Robert Cassanello, a history professor at the University of Central Florida and president of the statewide United Faculty of Florida labor union, described the decision to Orlando Weekly as a “huge victory for academic freedom in Florida.” His union, affiliated with the Florida Education Association, represents more than 25,000 full-time faculty at all of Florida’s public universities and 16 state colleges.
The ruling prevents Florida from enforcing part of the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (WOKE) Act” passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022.
DeSantis pushed for the law as a bulwark against “indoctrination” in university classrooms. It bars professors from endorsing precepts of critical race theory, including eight specific tenets.
For example, the law bans instruction that causes students to “feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin or sex.”
Supporters of the law said they sought to halt teachings that supported racial discrimination, while opponents in the Legislature, mostly Democrats contended it was really an attempt to quash candid teaching about historic racial horrors in the U.S., including slavery and the Jim Crow era.
Other parts of the law sought to ban workplace training at companies regarding racial, gender and sexual orientation issues, but those provisions have been struck down by federal courts.
Judge Barbara Lagoa, also a Trump appointee, wrote a dissent arguing the state had the right to restrict the speech of professors in the classroom.
“To be clear, the First Amendment protects all viewpoints in the public square, whether they are conventional or controversial. But it does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement,” Lagoa wrote. “We need not agree or disagree with Florida that the viewpoints at issue here constitute racial discrimination; we need only acknowledge that the State is allowed to decide what is endorsed by its professors in its own classrooms.”
Before Lagoa was appointed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals she sat on the Florida Supreme Court as an appointee of DeSantis.
In her decision Grant stated she agreed the courts shouldn’t choose the content of university classrooms, but argued they must intervene when the government unduly restricts speech.
“We share the dissent’s view that the federal courts do not police curriculum. But we do police the First Amendment,” Grant wrote. “And if the history of that Amendment tells us anything, it is that the government cannot forbid what it perceives as heresy.”
Cassanello, a professor who was himself a plaintiff in one of the earliest lawsuits against DeSantis’ Stop WOKE law, believes this decision from the appeals court will give professors the confidence to go into their classrooms and teach how they see fit. “I think this is, you know, a shining hope for people that will be able to reclaim the autonomy of our colleges and universities again.”
Orlando Weekly reporter McKenna Schueler contributed to this report.
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