TAMPA, Fla. — A federal judge has stopped Florida from enforcing its Individual Freedom Act, also known as the "Stop W.O.K.E. Act," on the state's public colleges and universities.
In a lawsuit filed by a University of South Florida professor and student, the court ruled the "positively dystopian" act bans professors "from expressing disfavored viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints."
Earlier this year, the Florida Legislature passed the "Individual Freedom Act" to prohibit training or instruction that "espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels" students or employees to believe in eight concepts surrounding race and gender.
The lawsuit argued that the provisions of the act surrounding higher education unconstitutionally limit free expression and mandate faculty censorship.
"Defendants respond that the First Amendment offers no protection here. They argue that because university professors are public employees, they are simply the State's mouthpieces in university classrooms," U.S. District Judge Mark Walker wrote in his ruling.
"It is a happy day not only for Sam and me, but for the institutions of this country," Plaintiff Adriana Novoa, a USF professor of 17 years, said to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. FIRE is the organization that filed the lawsuit on behalf of Novoa and student Sam Rechek.
"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," the ruling reads.
FIRE says this suit is a victory for higher education, however other lawsuits are challenging the prohibited concepts of race and sex.