United States of America

Court Strikes Down Florida's Stop WOKE Act

Was this act a defense of students against indoctrination or an unconstitutional assault on academic freedom?

JUL 7·Updated JUL 8

Court Strikes Down Florida's Stop WOKE Act

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Above: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks in Hialeah Gardens, Florida, on April 22, 2022. Image credit: Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

The Facts

A divided 2-1 panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled Tuesday that Florida's Stop WOKE Act violates the First Amendment rights of professors at public colleges and universities, upholding a lower court's preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of the law.
Bloomberg Law
Newsmax
Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion and was joined by Judge Charles Wilson, a Clinton appointee. Judge Barbara Lagoa, also a Trump appointee and former DeSantis-appointed Florida Supreme Court justice, dissented.
The Washington Examiner
CNBC
Florida's Stop WOKE Act, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2022, barred professors from endorsing eight specific concepts tied to race, sex and national origin, including instruction that could cause students to "feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress" based on the past actions of others of the same race.
Tallahassee Democrat
CBS News
The majority disagreed with Florida's "salary-for-speech" argument, which claimed that if the state pays for a professor's salary, "their speech is the state’s speech." Judge Grant described it as a "breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse."
The Guardian
Florida Politics
In her dissent, Lagoa argued that the First Amendment "does not compel all viewpoints to be worthy of state-sponsored endorsement" and that the state acted within its authority to determine what professors may endorse in public classrooms.
Politico
Central Florida Public Media
The legal challenge was brought by the ACLU, ACLU of Florida, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and law firm Ballard Spahr, alongside the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. The 11th Circuit previously struck down the law's workplace diversity training provisions in 2024.
CNBC
Jacksonville Today

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The Spin

Democratic narrative

The 11th Circuit's ruling against the Stop WOKE Act is a landmark win for academic freedom. Public universities exist as centers of free inquiry, and no legislature gets to dictate which ideas students are allowed to encounter. The First Amendment trusts students to evaluate ideas themselves.

FIRE

ACLU

Republican narrative

The Stop WOKE Act was a reasonable pushback against ideological indoctrination. Elite bureaucracies in universities have been pushing racialist ideology onto students, and Florida was right to draw a line. One dissenting judge made clear the majority rewrote precedent to reach a political outcome, not a legally sound one.

James Uthmeier on X