Florida’s “Stop WOKE” Act was ruled unconstitutional by a U.S. appeals court Tuesday for being in violation of the First Amendment.
The Stop the Wrong to Our Kids and Employees Act, or the Stop WOKE Act, banned workplaces from requiring mandatory diversity training. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld a lower Florida court’s ruling that the law was unconstitutional.
“We reject this latest attempt to control speech by recharacterizing it as conduct. Florida may be exactly right about the nature of the ideas it targets. Or it may not,” U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant wrote in the ruling. “Either way, the merits of these views will be decided in the clanging marketplace of ideas rather than a codebook or a courtroom.”
Judge Grant was joined on a three-person panel with Judges Andrew Brasher and Charles Wilson. Grant and Brasher were appointed by former President Donald Trump.
“By limiting its restrictions to a list of ideas designated as offensive, the Act targets speech based on its content. And by barring only speech that endorses any of those ideas, it penalizes certain viewpoints — the greatest First Amendment sin,” the ruling said.