US appeals court strikes down key part of Florida law restricting campus race and gender discussionsRon DeSantis's Stop Woke Act suffers another legal setback, with the state accused of 'puppeteering'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/07/stop-woke-act-appeal-florida-desantis 🔗The Guardian - Richard Luscombe
Tue 7 Jul 2026 15.25 EDT
A federal appeals panel struck down a significant chunk of Ron DeSantis's so-called Stop Woke Act on Tuesday, delivering another rebuff to the Republican Florida governor's efforts to stifle free speech in higher education.
In a scathing order, judges of the 11th circuit court of appeal said by a 2-1 majority that the higher education component of the law – which prevented college and university professors teaching or sharing thoughts on concepts of race and gender – breached the free expression rights guaranteed under the US constitution's first amendment.
It accused the state of "puppeteering": making the educators their mouthpieces by controlling what they can say or teach.
"Because the government pays the professors' salaries, Florida says, their speech is the state's speech," Britt Grant, a Donald Trump-appointed judge who wrote the majority opinion, said. "Emphatically no.
"Florida's salary-for-speech rule is a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse in the very places the state's own statutes recognize as centers of inquiry – classrooms where students are trusted to puzzle through ideas that are good and bad, easy and hard, ideally getting ever closer to the truth."----------------------------------
There should be a law against writing illegal laws. Or at least some kind of penalty.
