A federal judge in Florida on Thursday blocked a law pushed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that restricts certain race-based conversations and analysis in colleges.
Tallahassee U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a temporary injunction against the so-called “Stop Woke” act in a ruling that called the legislation “positively dystopian.”
The law prohibits teaching or business practices that contend members of one ethnic group are inherently racist and should feel guilt for past actions committed by others. It also bars the notion that a person’s status as privileged or oppressed is necessarily determined by their race or gender, or that discrimination is acceptable to achieve diversity.
“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,” Walker wrote. “If our ‘priests of democracy’ are not allowed to shed light on challenging ideas, then democracy will die in darkness.”
The ruling is at least a temporary setback to the powerful Republican governor’s agenda to combat what he describes as the “woke ideology” of liberals and critical race theory, a way of thinking about America’s history through the lens of racism. DeSantis won a landslide reelection to a second term this month after a campaign that focused heavily on cultural issues.
The governor’s office did not immediately respond Thursday to an emailed request for comment. The governor has often said rulings that halt his legislative priorities are likely to be reversed by appeals courts in Florida that are generally more conservative.
In his lengthy ruling, Walker quoted from George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” writing “‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,’ and the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom.’”
Judge Walker in August issued a similar ruling on the law that blocked it from taking effect in businesses. The law is also subject to another legal challenge from a group of K-12 teachers and a student.
The governor began pushing for the law late last year and the Republican-controlled Legislature passed it during the 2022 legislative session.
“What you see now with the rise of this woke ideology is an attempt to really delegitimize our history and to delegitimize our institutions and I view the wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism,” DeSantis said when first floating the legislation. “They really want to tear at the fabric of our society.”
Critical race theory was developed during the 1970s and 1980s in response to what scholars viewed as a lack of racial progress following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people in society.
Conservatives have rejected critical race theory, arguing the philosophy racially divides American society and aims to rewrite history to make white people believe they are inherently racist.
(AP)
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7 Responses
I wonder if the same court would champion the same academic freedom if the roles of Black and White were reversed in the Woke curriculum. Seeing as this is a Federal judge, whatever rule is applied needs to be applied across the country. So how about “academic freedom” trumping such things as “safe spaces” (where certain topics and ideas are forbidden) in these very same institutions?
To the democrats on this site do you agree with the judge?
wicked, corrupt judges
A District Court opinion means very little. Especially on a “hot” topic, what matters is the Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.
If the law applies to non-governmental schools, it would violate the Federal First amendment of the non-state entities running the school. Also note that to the extent you afford teachers or parents the “right” to object to a conservative school curriculum, it would also be applicable to conservative parents objecting to WOKE curricula in blue states.
If Florida’s constitution allows for local control of public schools (rather than state control), it raises additional questions but those would usually go the state courts to adjudicate, and indeed the whole case may be thrown out since the issue is the relationship of the Florida state government and schools sponsored by the local governments based on state law – which is a “state” rather than a “federal” question.
I agree with the ruling.
1. He always says he wants to make sure PARENTS can control their children’s education, but the truth is he/republicans want to control what’s taught. Conservatives are supposed to support free speech. I’d be cautious about giving the government control over what you can teach in the classroom. With his precident, an antheist government can later turn around and do the same thing to us.
2. It’s not clear to me any school curriculum or a mass group of teachers are teaching students to feel bad about being white, etc. or if this is just a rallying point to get people fired up. Sure, there are radical teachers out there who should not be teaching, but in a country of half a billion people, you’re going to always have a bunch of bad teachers, regardless of the laws.
It sounds like this ruling was only about colleges, not public schools. If so, I agree that the state cannot control what is taught at colleges, even state owned ones, because inherent in the concept of a university is academic freedom. But the judge should have added that this ruling applies only to colleges that actually do respect academic freedom, because a whole lot of colleges nowadays have stopped doing that. Those colleges have forfeited the right to appeal to that freedom now.
er, you’d be cautious about giving the government control over what they could teach…right, but hatred, racism, immorality, gender brainwashing, all of which is sanctioned and pushed by liberals in the government, is ok? No, only the insanity that a decent politician is trying to prevent children from being brainwashed with, that is “government intervention” to you! The government has an obligation to protect innocent children from the sick groomers and from the criminals profiting immensely by providing schools with the CRT “educational” material and from all who want to hurt and confuse them them emotionally and mentally. That is why we have a government and laws.