A federal judge in Florida on Friday permanently blocked a key part of Governor Ron DeSantis’s anti-woke legislation that would have banned diversity- and race-related training in private workplaces.
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida chief judge Mark Walker granted a permanent injunction striking down the law’s workplace provisions over First Amendment violations pertaining to free speech. Walker, an Obama-appointed judge, ruled in August 2022 that the law was unconstitutional and temporarily blocked it. His previous decision was upheld by an appeals court in March, prompting the judge to issue a permanent injunction.
The Republican-backed law, otherwise known as the Stop WOKE Act, prohibits colleges, universities, and companies from inserting critical-race-theory teachings, including lessons on systemic racism and white guilt, into student curricula or staff programming.
Pertaining to its workplace provisions, the law listed eight race-related concepts and said any 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.”
One of the concepts states that members of a particular demographic are “morally superior” to members of another demographic.
The law’s provisions related to higher education are still awaiting an appeals ruling.
“Today’s decision serves as a powerful reminder that the First Amendment cannot be warped to serve the interests of elected officials,” special counsel Shalini Goel Agarwal of Protect Democracy, which represented businesses that sued Florida, said following the latest decision.
Honeymoon registry Honeyfund, a Florida-based Ben & Jerry’s franchisee Primo Tampa, and workplace-diversity consultant firm Collective Concepts along with its co-founder, Chevara Orrin, all challenged the law. The plaintiffs claimed they were forced to censor themselves “on important societal matters” and “from engaging employees in robust discussion of ideas essential for improving their workplaces.”
Attorneys, who represented the DeSantis administration, argued the Stop WOKE Act did not restrict any speech. Instead, it only prohibited businesses from forcing their employees to listen to “certain speech against their will” or else they would lose their jobs.
National Review contacted DeSantis’s communications office for comment on Friday’s order.