Judge Permanently Blocks Portion Of Florida’s Stop WOKE Act As A Violation Of Free Speech

Demonstrators protest Florida Governor Ron DeSantis plan to eliminate Advanced Placement courses on African American studies in high schools as they stand outside the Florida State Capitol on February 15, 2023, in Tallahassee, Florida. | Source: The Washington Post / Getty

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ white and fragile war on wokeness was dealt a moderate blow Friday after a judge permanently blocked part of Florida’s Stop WOKE Act, which, once you peel back all of the right-wing propagandizing smoke and mirrors, is essentially a law to preserve white nationalism under the guise of parental rights and racial equality.

According to CNN, Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker issued a two-page order granting a permanent injunction against provisions in the law that ban mandatory workplace training such as diversity or anti-racism training, which Walker ruled “violates free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution.”

From CNN:

Walker first issued the preliminary injunction to block the state from enforcing prohibitions on mandatory workplace activities and trainings in August 2022, saying the act “discriminates on the basis of viewpoint in violation of the First Amendment and is impermissibly vague in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

The judge’s Friday order came after a federal appeals court in March upheld the injunction, agreeing part of the law infringed on employers’ free speech rights.

At the time, DeSantis’ office issued a statement disagreeing with the ruling, describing it as upholding the idea that “companies have a right to indoctrinate their employees with racist and discriminatory ideologies.”

DeSantis, his office and the Florida Board of (Mis)Education love using that word “indoctrinate” to describe anything that offends their Caucasian sensibilities. DeSantis promoted the Atop WOKE Act as a law that would end all teachings that include systemic racism or the notion that a person is privileged or oppressed based on their race, sex or national origin—because he and his jingoist ilk are too fragile and deluded to abide by the mere suggestion that white people are advantaged in a country where discrimination based on race has been legal for the overwhelming majority of its existence, not to mention a country that white people still overwhelmingly and disproportionately govern. 

DeSantis doesn’t believe systemic racism in America is real despite being a living, breathing example of it. DeSantis and the Florida GOP successfully redistricted Flroda’s congressional map in an intentional effort to dilute Black voting power, an effort that is trending across red state America. He and his state have rejected any Black history that makes white conservatives uncomfortable while approving Black history that would naturally make Black people uncomfortable by teaching that the enslaved benefited from slavery and that Black people also perpetuated violence during historic race massacres like Tulsa and Ocoee. Florida officials also selected PragerU—an unaccredited conservative non-profit organization founded by a loud and proud racist—to provide classroom materials to Florida schools. (I previously reported about how PragerU produced animated videos for children that taught, among other things, that iconic abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass would have agreed with America’s choice to prioritize white supremacy over ending slavery.)

DeSantis and his anti-woke lynch mob are not actually against indoctrination, they just want the right kind of indoctrination legalized. That’s all the Stop WOKE Act was ever about, and all of it should be overturned.

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