A federal appeals panel has struck down a significant portion of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s Stop Woke Act, delivering a setback to the state’s efforts to limit free speech in higher education.

In a 2-1 decision, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that the law’s higher education provisions—which barred college and university professors from teaching or sharing ideas on race and gender—violate the free expression rights guaranteed by the US Constitution’s First Amendment. The court accused the state of "puppeteering," controlling educators by making them mouthpieces of the government.

"Because the government pays the professors’ salaries, Florida says, their speech is the state’s speech," wrote Britt Grant, a Donald Trump-appointed judge who authored the majority opinion. "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."

Passed in 2022 and formally known as the Individual Freedom Act, the Stop Woke Act restricted how race and gender could be taught in schools and colleges and discussed in the workplace. This ruling echoes a 2024 decision by the same court that blocked the law’s workplace provisions on similar constitutional grounds.

The decision also reinforces a 2022 district court injunction preventing the law’s implementation at Florida’s colleges and universities. Civil rights and free speech groups that challenged the law hailed the ruling as a major victory.

"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," a spokesperson said.

Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund, described the Stop Woke Act as an "egregious" attempt by the DeSantis administration to force Florida’s public higher education system to adopt the viewpoints of those in power.

Sources