The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit struck down the higher education provisions of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, a classroom censorship law in Florida that severely restricted educators from teaching about race and gender in schools and workplaces.
The court ruled the higher education provision of the law was unconstitutional, saying: “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.”
The court added that it doesn’t matter if the State of Florida agrees or disagrees with the ideas. “Either way, in this context the First Amendment trusts students to figure it out for themselves.”
The case, known as Pernell v. Lamb, is a 2022 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Florida and the Legal Defense Fund.
Championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, this law targeted and placed vague restrictions on educators’ ability to teach concepts such as racism, sexism, privilege and unconscious bias. It also imposed harsh penalties, including ineligibility for millions of dollars in performance funding from the state for colleges and universities and termination for educators who had been found to violate the law.
This decision marked the first time an appellate court has considered the constitutionality of this censorship movement, and it will have implications for students and educators across the country who are subject to related laws. Since the Stop W.O.K.E Act went into effect, more than 30 states have moved to introduce and pass higher education classroom censorship bills.
— from staff reports