A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that key provisions of Florida's Stop WOKE Act likely violate the First Amendment by restricting how race and gender are taught at the state's public colleges and universities.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law against university professors, finding the measure likely unconstitutionally restricts protected classroom speech and impermissibly suppresses disfavored viewpoints in higher education.

Writing for the majority, Judge Britt Grant, an appointee of President Donald Trump, said the First Amendment protects freedom of speech because it is "essential to freedom of thought," adding that teaching and scholarship are entitled to constitutional protection.

Grant rejected Florida's argument that because the state pays professors' salaries, it has broad authority to control what they say in the classroom.

"Florida's salary-for-speech rule is 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, classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth," Grant wrote.

She added that the state's position "runs headlong into the Supreme Court's repeated, if imprecise, endorsements of academic freedom," concluding, "If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it."

Grant said Florida unsuccessfully attempted to combine public-employee speech doctrine with government speech doctrine to create "a new rule: if the government pays a professor's salary, it has total control over her classroom speech."

"That is not a blessed union," she wrote.

The court also rejected the state's reliance on the 1991 decision in Bishop v. Aronov, finding that case involved a narrow restriction imposed by a university on one professor's religious comments, rather than a statewide prohibition on viewpoints related to race and sex.

"The speech ban Florida's political leaders seek to impose here is different in both nature and degree from these ordinary concerns," Grant wrote.

"The rule Florida developed for this case does not withstand scrutiny."

She acknowledged that some of the concepts targeted by the law may be objectionable, but said the Constitution leaves those debates to students and professors.

"The ideas Florida targets may well be noxious. Or maybe not. Either way, in this context the First Amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves," Grant wrote.

The challenged provision prohibits public colleges and universities from providing instruction that "espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels" students to believe any of eight concepts concerning race, sex, national origin, and privilege.

Those include ideas that one race or sex is morally superior to another; that individuals are inherently racist or sexist because of their race or sex; or that concepts such as merit, excellence, objectivity, and colorblindness are inherently racist or sexist.

Judge Charles R. Wilson, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, joined Grant's opinion.

Judge Barbara Lagoa, also a Trump appointee, dissented, arguing the majority improperly substituted its own judgment for that of state policymakers.

"The majority's rule, meant to avoid what it believes is the State's improper viewpoint discrimination, nonetheless endorses its own form of viewpoint discrimination," Lagoa wrote. She added that states have authority to establish curriculum and regulate classroom instruction at public institutions.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier praised Lagoa's dissent, writing on X that she "may be the best jurist in our country."

Referencing the U.S. Supreme Court, he added, "She should be on SCOTUS."

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which challenged the law in 2022, hailed the ruling as a victory for academic freedom.

"Today's important decision means that college remains a place where professors and students are allowed to debate controversial topics, even if politicians disagree with them," FIRE senior attorney Greg H. Greubel said in a statement.

"Today's ruling makes clear something we've known for a long time: Governments cannot censor their way to freedom."

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Florida, and Legal Defense Fund also participated in the legal challenge.