ATLANTA (CN) – A section of a Florida law restricting discussion of race, gender and diversity unconstitutionally limits the speech of college professors, a divided panel of the 11th Circuit ruled Tuesday.
“If the First Amendment provides any limit of protection to public university classrooms, this statute exceeds it,” U.S. District Judge Britt Grant wrote for the majority.
In a 2-1 decisionThe Atlanta-based appeals court rejected a request by Florida officials to throw out a federal judge’s decision preventing the Sunshine State from enforcing a provision of the Florida Individual Freedom Act, also known as the Stop WOKE Act (Stop WOKE Act).
The law would have restricted state university professors from adopting certain views on eight concepts related to race, color, national origin or sex during classroom discussions.
The Individual Freedom Act amended Florida’s Educational Equity Act by creating new speech restrictions that prohibit any “training or instruction that advocates, promotes, advances, instills or coerces” students at public state universities to believe any of eight concepts: a “blacklist of ideas,” a lawyer for the plaintiffs said. said.
Concepts include ideas that suggest that members of one race, color, sex, or national origin are morally superior to others, that a person is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive” because of their race or sex, or that people should feel guilty for 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 implementing the provision.
“Viewpoint-based restrictions designed to coerce or prohibit a set of beliefs are dangerous in any setting, and they are especially harmful in the classroom context,” Grant, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote Tuesday. “That goes double for broadly worded but imprecise regulations like these, which are sure to leave professors and their students guessing as to what kind of speech might violate the rules.”
Grant was joined in the majority by Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Wilson, a Bill Clinton appointee.
A representative for the Florida Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The majority rejected the state’s “outlandish” argument that if the government pays a professor’s salary, all of the professor’s classroom speech is government speech unprotected by the First Amendment.
“Florida’s salary-for-speech rule is a startling assertion of the power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in what state statutes recognize as centers of inquiry — classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle out ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally moving ever closer to the truth,” Gran wrote.
In a 33-page dissenting opinion, U.S. District Judge Barbara Lagoa, a Trump appointee, argued that the state’s authority is “at its peak” in public classrooms.
“We need not agree or disagree with Florida that the views at issue here constitute racial discrimination; we need only recognize that the state is allowed to decide what is endorsed by its professors in its classrooms,” Lagoa wrote.
The majority rejected the state’s arguments that it was trying to limit discriminatory conduct and protect its own “cherished” ideals. The state has wrongly assumed that exposure to “wrong” viewpoints is a serious harm, the majority ruled.
“A professor who espouses a particular idea does not stand the same way as one who mocks a student, threatens a student, or targets a student,” Grant wrote.
Florida A&M University College of Law Professor LeRoy Pernell celebrated the decision at a STATEMENT Tuesday.
“We are thrilled that the court has stopped the deletion of topics that have real implications for our students, allowing them to learn, discuss and develop tools to combat the complex issue of racism in our country, unhindered by those who would dictate that only state-approved opinion can be promoted,” said Pernell, one of the named plaintiffs.
Spokesmen for the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, which represented the plaintiffs in the case, also applauded the decision.
“This decision sets a strong precedent that higher education cannot be limited to the whims of politicians,” said Leah Watson, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program.
Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the ruling makes clear that “Florida cannot actively erase their history of discrimination or their lived experiences without violating our Constitution.”
Formerly 11th Circuit struck down another section of the Individual Freedom Act as unconstitutional.
An appeals court in 2024 found a provision in the law that prohibited employers from requiring employees to attend workplace training events on topics including race and inequality violated the First Amendment.
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