11th Circuit Upholds Injunction Against Florida WOKE Law

A federal appeals court has upheld a key injunction against Florida's "Stop WOKE Act," dealing a significant legal setback to the state's efforts to regulate discussions of race and gender in public university classrooms. In a 2-1 ruling on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed a lower court's decision that the portion of the 2022 law applying to higher education violates the First Amendment.

The court's majority opinion, written by Judge Britt Grant, rejected the state's central argument that professors' classroom speech constitutes government speech because they are state employees. "If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it," Grant wrote. The opinion described the law as "a breathtaking assertion of power to ban unpopular ideas from public discourse" in the very classrooms designed for inquiry.

The Individual Freedom Act, commonly called the "Stop WOKE Act," prohibits instruction or training that compels individuals to believe specific concepts about race, color, sex, or national origin. These include ideas that a person is inherently privileged, biased, or...