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A federal appeals panel struck down a significant chunk of Ron DeSantis’s so-called Stop Woke Act on Tuesday, delivering another rebuff to the Republican Florida governor’s efforts to stifle free speech in higher education.
In a scathing order, judges of the ۱۱th circuit court of appeal said by a ۲-۱ majority that the higher education component of the law – which prevented college and university professors teaching or sharing thoughts on concepts of race and gender – breached the free expression rights guaranteed under the US constitution’s first amendment.
It accused the state of “puppeteering”: making the educators their mouthpieces by controlling what they can say or teach.
“Because the government pays the professors’ salaries, Florida says, their speech is the state’s speech,” Britt Grant, a Donald Trump-appointed judge who wrote the majority opinion, said. “Emphatically no.
“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.”
It added: “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.”
The ruling removes a flagship element of DeSantis’s second-term agenda aimed at perceived leftwing ideology on Florida’s state-run higher education campuses. Passed in ۲۰۲۲, the Stop Woke Act, formally branded the Individual Freedom Act, restricted how race and gender could be taught in schools and colleges, and discussed in the workplace.
Tuesday’s decision mirrors the same appeals court’s ۲۰۲۴ ruling blocking the workplace provision of the law on the grounds that the state was attempting, unconstitutionally, to recharacterize protected free speech as conduct it could ban.
It reinforces a district court’s November ۲۰۲۲ injunction against implementation of the law at Florida’s colleges and universities – and represents a considerable victory for civil rights and free speech advocacy groups that launched the legal action.
The lawsuit’s named plaintfill – LeRoy Pernell, a professor at Florida A&M University’s college of law – welcomed the ruling.
“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,” he said in a statement.
Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund, said the Stop Woke Act was an “egregious” effort by the DeSantis administration to try to force the public higher education system in Florida to adopt the viewpoints of those in power.
“It is no coincidence that this state law aimed to censor the perspectives of Black people and LGBTQ+ people, the very same people who are currently under attack,” Lee said.
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“With this decision, the federal appeals court has made clear that Florida cannot actively erase their history of discrimination or their lived experiences without running afoul of our constitution.”
Carrie McNamara, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, also hailed the ruling as a victory for free speech.
“By upholding the district court’s ruling, the ۱۱th circuit ensured that our system of higher education is guided by the principle of free speech, not government censorship,” she said.
“Our classrooms are meant to be rooms of curiosity, creativity, and learning. When we stifle this kind of critical thinking, we risk losing our education system as we know it.”
There was no immediate reaction to the ruling from the DeSantis administration or Florida’s unelected attorney general, James Uthmeier, the governor’s former chief of staff elevated by DeSantis in February ۲۰۲۵.
