Appeals court slams Florida’s ‘Stop-Woke’ law for committing ‘greatest First Amendment sin’

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Florida is legally blocked from enforcing a key portion of the high-profile 2022 law restricting what Gov. Ron DeSantis called “woke” workplace trainings about race after a federal appeals court ruled Monday that the policy “exceeds the bounds of the First Amendment.”

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dealt a blow to the DeSantis administration by deeming one of the Republican governor’s signature laws — the “Stop Woke” Act — unconstitutional, upholding a previous ruling that prevented it from taking hold. DeSantis officials, meanwhile, disagreed with the decision, signaling that the governor could ask the Supreme Court to weigh in.

“By limiting its restrictions to a list of ideas designated as offensive, the Act targets speech based on its content,” Judge Britt C. Grant, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the opinion. “And by barring only speech that endorses any of those ideas, it penalizes certain viewpoints — the greatest First Amendment sin.”

Florida’s Republican-led Legislature passed the “anti-woke” legislation, FL HB 7 (22R), or the Individual Freedom Act, in 2022 with the backing of DeSantis. It expanded Florida’s anti-discrimination laws to prohibit schools and companies from leveling guilt or blame to students and employees based on race or sex, taking aim at lessons over issues like “white privilege” by creating new protections for students and workers, including that a person should not be instructed to “feel guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” due to their race, color, sex or national origin.

A group of businesses — honeymoon registry technology company Honeyfund.com and Florida-based Ben & Jerry’s franchisee Primo Tampa, along with workplace diversity consultancy Collective Concepts and its co-founder Chevara Orrin — combined to challenge the “anti-woke” workplace policies in federal court. Attorneys for the companies, which are being represented by Protect Democracy and law firm Ropes & Gray, contend that the policies force them to censor themselves “on important societal matters” and “from engaging employees in robust discussion of ideas essential for improving their workplaces.”

The DeSantis administration, though, pushed back on the appeals ruling, claiming that the court “has held that companies have a right to indoctrinate their employees with racist and discriminatory ideologies.” The state is “reviewing all options on appeal going forward.”

“We disagree with the Court’s opinion that employers can require employees to be taught — as a condition of employment — that one race is morally superior to another race,” Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for DeSantis, said in a statement. “The First Amendment protects no such thing, and the State of Florida should have every right to protect Floridians from racially hostile workplaces.”

Attorneys for the state and DeSantis have argued in court that the “anti-woke” law restricts no speech and only regulates that employers can’t force employees to listen to “certain speech against their will” at the risk of losing their jobs.

The appeals court disagreed, going into detail in the 22-page ruling about potential faults in the law. The panel of judges suggested that, under the proposed policies, “a government could ban riding on a parade float if it did not agree with the message on the banner.”

“We cannot agree, and we reject this latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct,” wrote Grant, who was joined by Judges Charles Wilson and Andrew Brasher. “Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets. Or it may not. Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom.”

The Monday ruling was heralded as a “major victory for free speech in the workplace” by the group suing the state and their attorneys.

“Speech codes have no place in American society, and elected officials have no business censoring the speech of business owners simply because they don’t agree with what’s being expressed,” Shalini Goel Agarwal, Protect Democracy counsel, said in a statement. “Barring employers from engaging in speech that powerful politicians don’t like is a move straight out of the authoritarian playbook.”

A similar lawsuit surrounding how the Stop-Woke Act applies to lessons on race in higher education is still playing out in federal court. In the same fashion, this portion of the law was blocked through a preliminary injunction and is awaiting a hearing scheduled for June.