Florida House Bill 7 ("Stop WOKE Act") struck down by preliminary injunction

[pondering]

I've seen some scattered discussion here of House Bill 7 - the Florida law that regulates classroom speech in colleges and universities about certain topics (presented by politicians as an anti-"Critical Race Theory" bill) - so you might be interested in this development from a couple of weeks ago: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/3740100-judge-strikes-down-higher-education-portions-of-desantiss-stop-woke-act/

The judge didn't mince his words:

Walker ruled the First Amendment protects professors' in-class speech and the provisions were impermissibly vague, describing the law as "positively dystopian" as he compared it to the Ministry of Truth, the propaganda agency in Orwell's novel.

"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 ruled.

"If our 'priests of democracy' are not allowed to shed light on challenging ideas, then democracy will die in darkness," he added. "But the First Amendment does not permit the State of Florida to muzzle its university professors, impose its own orthodoxy of viewpoints and cast us all into the dark."

Of course, the state is appealing, so this may well be reinstated by the very conservative judges on the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta.

[apl68]

It really was a terrible piece of legislation.

[Parasaurolophus]

Some friends in Florida think the damage has already been done; colleagues have revised their courses to avoid problems.

[Hibush]

Of course, the state is appealing, so this may well be reinstated by the very conservative judges on the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta.

Thanks for the update. Past the 11th Circuit, what are the Supremes' records on prrior restraint of speech?

[pondering]

Of course, the state is appealing, so this may well be reinstated by the very conservative judges on the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta.

Thanks for the update. Past the 11th Circuit, what are the Supremes' records on prrior restraint of speech?

Good question, especially with regard to the speech of university professors (which was at stake in the lawsuit brought by these plaintiffs - the "Stop WOKE Act" also affects employers and K-12 schools).

I'm not a lawyer, just a humanities professor in Florida with an obvious interest in following the case (not that I teach particularly "woke" content in my classes, and certainly not CRT). With that disclaimer out of the way, I found this synthesis helpful: https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/2167/stop-w-o-k-e-act

Towards the end, it summarizes previous cases to which the judge made reference, which seem to have been Freedom of Speech cases involving professors that went before the supreme court:

In analyzing decisions in Rosenberger v. Rectors and Visitors of the University of Virginia (1995), a decision involving funding from student activity fees for student publications, and Garcetti v. Ceballos (2006), limiting First Amendment protections for speech by public officials made as part of their official duties, Walker ruled that neither decision had established that everything that professors said in the classroom was understood to be governmentally endorsed and therefore subject to government control under the government speech doctrine. He distinguished between "the State's right to make content-based choice" in creating curricula from "unfettered discretion in limiting a professor's ability to express certain viewpoints about the content of the curriculum once it has been set."   

[Wahoo Redux]

Bravo.

Of course, it was never meant to go into effect.  DeSantis is no dummy, and he is a lawyer.  He knew this law would never fly.  He just wanted an agitprop.

[Vkw10]

There's also the chilling effect such laws have on free speech. People worried about supporting their families become much more cautious about what they say when such laws are passed.