Appeals Court Rules Against Florida's Stop WOKE Act
Florida’s Stop WOKE Act is a violation of the free-speech rights of professors, a panel of appeals court judges ruled Tuesday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled against the anti-woke law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, calling it is “a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse” where students are expected to “puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth,” Politico reported.
“If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it,” Judge Britt C. Grant, appointed by President Donald Trump, wrote in the opinion.
Judge Charles Wilson, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, agreed with Grant, while Judge Barbara Lagoa, a former Florida Supreme Court judge appointed by DeSantis, who was appointed to the federal judiciary by Trump, dissented.
“This panel is not free to rewrite precedent simply because we dislike where it leads,” Lagoa wrote.
The law was originally passed by the Florida legislature in 2022 but has been blocked by the courts since then.
It prohibits teaching or business practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist and should feel guilt for past actions committed by others. It also bars the notion that a person’s status as privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by their race or gender or that discrimination is acceptable to achieve diversity.
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