11 CA panel strikes down Stop WOKE Act

In a context in which the First Amendment was being applied consistently and reasonably, this would be the easiest of easy cases, but I’ll take even one Trump judge on board at this point:

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2-1 decision Tuesday upholding a lower court decision against Florida’s so-called Stop WOKE Act is a necessary rebuke of state lawmakers and Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has sought to make Florida a prototype for a conservative higher education agenda. His explicit indoctrination program has already included the takeover (and profound mismanagement) of Florida’s New College, the deletion of sociology from state schools’ core curriculum and the subsequent censorship of its introductory sociology textbook.

The act outlawed teaching about ideas that are widely accepted across the social sciences and physical sciences, including the existence of structural racism. Professors were also threatened with termination for encouraging students to reflect on the legacy of slavery. DeSantis’ loss in this battle in his war on “woke” is therefore a win for students and faculty committed to discussing ideas free from state interference. In short, his loss is a victory for education.

Lawmakers have neither the disciplinary expertise nor the pedagogical skill to know what should be taught in college classrooms or how, and the 11th Circuit’s ruling is exceptionally clear: Legislators attempting to control professors’ classroom speech violate the First Amendment and undermine the very point of a college education. Importantly, the ruling dismantled Florida’s arguments that students who are asked to learn potentially disturbing ideas about America’s racist past (and present) are being subjected to unlawful discrimination. It’s notable that Tuesday’s decision was written by a judge appointed by President Donald Trump, because the president has been especially aggressive in stacking the courts with people who share his MAGA ideology. But Judge Britt Grant, who was joined in the ruling by Judge Charles Wilson, a Clinton appointee, couldn’t rationalize state intrusion into classrooms. She concluded, “If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.”

In her scathing ruling, Grant correctly pointed out that the law would truncate learning opportunities. “Hearing an idea you disagree with is not discrimination; it is an opportunity to come up with a better idea, or maybe even change your mind,” she wrote. Of course, changing minds about controversial issues such as racism is exactly what so many conservative legislators are trying to stop.

Judge Grant describes the DeSantis/Rufo legal theory, which would nullify the First Amendment entirely in academic contexts (which of course it its intention):

When several groups of professors challenged Florida’s new restrictions, the State cast about for an existing case or doctrine that could support its speech ban in the university setting. Finding none, it tried to marry public-employee speech cases with government speech doctrine, resulting in a new rule: if the government pays a professor’s salary, it has total control over her classroom speech.

That is not a blessed union. 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. This new rule also runs headlong into the Supreme Court’s repeated, if imprecise, endorsements of academic freedom. If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it.

One would hope that the Supreme Court will just let this decision stand, but needless to say I wouldn’t bet on it.