Appeals Court Says Nope To Florida Governor’s ‘Stop Woke’ Law, Denies Request To Lift Injunction Against It

Free Speech

from the stop-act-stopped dept

Playing to a crowd no one should desire to associate with, Donald Trump understudy Ron DeSantis has been saddling his constituents with a variety of noisy, performative legislation.

First, he tried to bypass the First Amendment and Section 230 immunity by hustling through a law aimed at preventing private companies from booting his buddies off their services for being the sorts of assholes they often tend to be.

As a chaser, DeSantis and his supporters in the legislature passed another law, the horribly titled “Stop WOKE Act” (since renamed the “Individual Freedom Act”). This was another attack on First Amendment rights, aimed at silencing any speech DeSantis and those like him find unpleasant.

Neither of these attempts to legislate away enshrined protections has made much headway. A federal court blocked the social media law back in June 2021. Another federal court did the same thing to the Stop WOKE Act in November of last year. This was actually the third blocking of the same law in response to multiple constitutional challenges filed by those affected by the ridiculous law.

If you’re an American lawmaker, you generally don’t want courts to immediately compare your legislative acts to George Orwell’s most famous work of dystopian fiction, “1984.” But that’s what happened here:

“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.” To confront certain viewpoints that offend the powers that be, the State of Florida passed the so-called “Stop W.O.K.E.” Act in 2022—redubbed (in line with the State’s doublespeak) the “Individual Freedom Act.” The law officially bans professors from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints. Defendants argue that, under this Act, professors enjoy “academic freedom” so long as they express only those viewpoints of which the State approves. This is positively dystopian.

That was the opening paragraph of the November decision. This is from the conclusion of the ruling that made it absolutely clear there was no way this law would ever be considered constitutional.

In this case, the State of Florida lays the cornerstone of its own Ministry of Truth under the guise of the Individual Freedom Act, declaring which viewpoints shall be orthodox and which shall be verboten in its university classrooms.

An injunction was granted, preventing the state from enforcing the clearly illegal law. The state has appealed this ruling and has asked the Eleventh Circuit to stay the injunction until it gets around to handling the case. No thanks, says the Appeals Court, in a two sentence order [PDF] denying the request. The second sentence is the more enjoyable of the two:

The Clerk is DIRECTED to treat any motion for reconsideration of this order as a non-emergency matter.

DeSantis won’t get to push his way to the front of the line or emphatically hassle the Appeals Court into getting around to his case until it’s ready to. And while he waits, he’ll remain unable to punish people for saying things he doesn’t like.

Hope springs eternal at the governor’s mansion, however. Here’s a small taste of that self-delusion, as provided by Politico.

“The Court did not rule on the merits of our appeal,” Bryan Griffin, press secretary for DeSantis, said in a statement. “The appeal is ongoing, and we remain confident that the law is constitutional.”

That’s not confidence. That’s bravado. Entirely different things. No court will find this law constitutional. May as well stop blowing taxpayer money on this losing cause. Better yet, stop blowing money on any other losing causes you think might be able to finally allow the state to directly regulate speech it doesn’t like.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, florida, free speech, ron desantis, stop woke act