Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida speaks during a roundtable event in March in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. On Tuesday, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that the De-Santis-championed Stop WOKE Act violates free speech. File Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI | License Photo
July 7 (UPI) -- A federal panel of appeals court judges ruled Tuesday that the Stop WOKE Act championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis violates the free speech of professors and is a "breathtaking assertion of power."
The Florida law restricted how professors can teach, especially when speaking about gender and race, in colleges and universities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled 2-1 to support a 2022 decision that called the law "positively dystopian," Politico reported.
The court Tuesday went further, saying the act 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."
"If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it," the ruling said.
