Portions of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-FL) Stop WOKE Act that restricted the incorporation of critical race theory in public university classrooms were blocked Thursday by a federal judge who said the legislation was comparable to George Orwell’s novel 1984.
Calling the law “positively dystopian,” Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida placed a temporary injunction against the portions of the law meant to ban or restrict critical race theory in public universities.
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“One thing is crystal clear — both robust intellectual inquiry and democracy require light to thrive,” Walker wrote. “Our professors are critical to a healthy democracy, and the State of Florida’s decision to choose which viewpoints are worthy of illumination and which must remain in the shadows has implications for us all. If our ‘priests of democracy’ are not allowed to shed light on challenging ideas, then democracy will die in darkness.”
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The law, first proposed by DeSantis, was passed during Florida’s 2022 legislative session and restricted how public university professors could discuss certain concepts related to race. It banned classroom instruction and employee training that included narratives about the superiority of one race over another or that someone bore responsibility and guilt for ancestral wrongdoings based on the color of their skin.
Walker’s ruling was celebrated by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech civil rights group that had sued to block the law.
“College campuses are spaces for debate, not dogma,” FIRE attorney Greg Greubel said in a press release. “Americans recognize that the government cannot be an all-powerful force permitted to control every word uttered by a professor in the classroom. Today’s ruling is an important first step in ensuring that professors’ First Amendment rights are respected by the state of Florida.”
But the judge’s ruling likely marks the first step in what portends to be a lengthy legal battle.
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, DeSantis spokesman Jeremy Redfern said the governor’s administration plans to appeal the decision, saying it “strongly disagreed” with the judge’s injunction.
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“The Stop WOKE Act protects the open exchange of ideas by prohibiting teachers or employers who hold agency over others from forcing discriminatory concepts on students as part of classroom instruction or on employees as a condition of maintaining employment,” Redfern said. “An ‘open-minded and critical’ environment necessitates that one is free from discrimination.”
