Conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals strikes down Florida's 'Stop WOKE Act'

 Part of a Florida law limiting discussions on race, gender and diversity unconstitutionally restricts the speech of college professors, a divided 11th Circuit panel ruled, according to Courthouse News Service.

“If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it,” U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant wrote on behalf of the majority.

In a 2-1 decision, the Atlanta-based appeals court rejected a request by Florida officials to toss out a federal judge’s ruling preventing the Sunshine State from enforcing a provision of Florida’s Individual Freedom Act, also known as the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act (Stop WOKE Act).

The law would have restricted state university professors from endorsing certain views on eight concepts related to race, color, national origin or sex during classroom discussions.

The Individual Freedom Act amended the Florida Education Equality Act by creating new speech restrictions barring any “training or instruction that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” students at public state universities to believe any of eight concepts: a “blacklist of ideas,” an attorney for the plaintiffs said.

The concepts include ideas suggesting that members of one race, color, sex or national origin are morally superior to others, that a person is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive” by virtue of his race or sex, or that people should feel guilty about the actions of their ancestors.

Students, professors and a student organization at six of Florida’s public universities sued the Florida Board of Governors to prevent officials from enforcing the provision.

“Viewpoint-based restrictions designed to compel or ban a set of beliefs are dangerous in any setting, and they are especially pernicious in the classroom context,” Grant, an appointee of Donald Trump, wrote on Tuesday. “That goes double for broadly worded yet imprecise regulations like these, which are sure to leave both professors and their students guessing about what kind of speech might violate the rules.”

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