Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Wednesday by promising to bring the suite of culture war policies he’s signed into law in Florida to the whole nation if he’s elected in 2024.
“The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism,” DeSantis said in an appearance on Fox News the same day he announced his campaign. “At the end of the day, it’s an attack on the truth. And because it’s a war on truth, I think we have no choice but to wage a war on woke.”
Broad swathes of DeSantis’ anti-woke agenda — from restrictions on the teaching of social science about race in colleges and universities, to bans on corporate diversity training to limits on public protests — have been temporarily suspended by judges who found them very likely to be in violation of the first and 14th amendments.
In response, a group of university professors, students and corporations filed three lawsuits challenging the law’s prohibitions on teaching race-based concepts or using them in diversity trainings for private-sector employees. The two lawsuits challenging the law’s application to colleges and universities were heard as a single case. In each case, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in northern Florida, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, suspended the law’s application with strong language.
In both cases, Walker determined that the law improperly allowed the state to discriminate against speech based on viewpoint: Professors or corporate trainers were banned from discussing the race-based concepts if they could be seen to be advancing or promoting them but not if they were criticizing or disparaging them.
“It’s pretty black-letter law that if the government is saying you may not offer a training that espouses one viewpoint but you can offer a training that espouses the opposite viewpoint, that that is pretty blatant viewpoint discrimination,” said Shalini Agarwal, a lawyer at the nonprofit Protect Democracy who serves as counsel for the private-sector plaintiffs.
“A law cannot pass constitutional muster if the people that are supposed to be following them do not understand what’s prohibited conduct and what’s permitted conduct,” said Greg Greubel, a lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression representing some of the university professors and students.
The law’s provisions were also deemed unconstitutionally vague because they allow discussion of the prohibited concepts if they are “given in an objective manner without endorsement.” Since no definition of “objective” is provided, the professors and corporate trainers would be, according to Walker, “at a loss on how to discuss concepts like white privilege, systemic racism, and white supremacy without simultaneously endorsing the notion that such prejudice should be overcome.”
Due to Walker’s decisions, the Stop WOKE Act’s provisions limiting college and university classroom discussions and corporate trainings are on hold. As of March 16, an appeals court panel upheld Walker’s injunction on the college and university prohibitions. However, the Stop WOKE Act’s prohibitions on teaching the eight race-based concepts in primary and secondary education remain in effect.
Still, this broad effort to limit First Amendment rights by imposing restrictions on what may be discussed in colleges, universities and the private sector raises concerns among those who work to protect those rights, especially as DeSantis looks to take this war national in his presidential campaign.
This content was originally published here.