The courts have rebuffed Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” for a second time.
A federal appeals court on Monday rejected restrictions that Gov. Ron DeSantis and Republican lawmakers placed on addressing race-related issues in workplace training, referring to them in a legal opinion as “the greatest First Amendment sin.”
Now that a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that the restrictions violate First Amendment rights, the DeSantis administration is left to consider if it is prepared to appeal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“This is not the first era in which Americans have held widely divergent views on important areas of morality, ethics, law and public policy,” the 22-page opinion said. “And it is not the first time that these disagreements have seemed so important, and their airing so dangerous, that something had to be done. But now, as before, the First Amendment keeps the government from putting its thumb on the scale.”
The panel, made up of two Donald Trump appointees and one Bill Clinton appointee, upheld a preliminary injunction issued in 2022 by Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker against the restrictions. The law was originally challenged by a group of businesses ranging from a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream franchisee to a company that provides consulting and training to employers about issues such as diversity, equity and inclusion.
Walker also separately issued a preliminary injunction against part of the law that would restrict the way race-related concepts can be taught in universities. The state has appealed that decision, with arguments scheduled in June.
The workplace training part of the law listed eight race-related concepts and said that a required training program or other activity that “espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels such individual (an employee) to believe any of the following concepts constitutes discrimination based on race, color, sex, or national origin.”
As an example of the concepts, the law targeted compelling employees to believe that an “individual, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the individual played no part.”
In court documents, the state disputed that the law violated speech rights, saying that it regulated “conduct.” It said businesses could still address the targeted concepts in workplace training – but couldn’t force employees to take part.
But the appeals court flatly rejected such arguments Monday, describing the law as the “latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct.”
One of the plaintiffs issued a statement Monday praising the opinion.
“The government obviously has no right to patrol my workplace for words that some politicians don’t like,” Antonio McBroom, CEO of Primo Tampa, said in the statement. “And the government obviously has no right to substitute its preferences for those of any businesses’ guests and team members.”